Paul Kingsnorth: What is there left to conserve?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2023
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Immerse yourself into the mind of luminary writer Paul Kingsnorth for a Sunday seminar on the theme of reconstruction. In dialogue with UnHerd’s Mary Harrington, we asked: when there’s nothing left to conserve, what is the point of conservatism?
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As an agnostic/atheist, I found your talk to be the most convincing argument for religion. I have been questioning my beliefs (or lack thereof) for a few years. I had a literal and profound religious experience upon visiting St Mark's Basilica -- against my wishes, dragged there by a friend on a trip to Rome. Really wanted to avoid the place given my convictions against Catholicism. Describing my surprising experience would take hundreds of words, if any words would even do. Despite my understanding of the psychological need to attach ourselves to something higher than ourselves, and having read some of your writings on the topic, Paul, I have put off an actual conversion. I have remained a "spiritual agnostic," but what you said here in this talk shows the importance of taking that next step, choosing to believe before the belief is forced upon oneself. I can now see how this happens, having witnessed "progress" since 2016, times in which first neoliberal political dogma and then corporate science were twisted into belief systems by elites who thought they were beyond religion. Thank you for your beautiful words.
the one question isn't what is God, rather what are you(matter, matter/spirit). A godless world filled with animals has consequences.
@@carlf2842 The animals on the surface of this planet, and their prevails and consequences while alive, are not of great significance in the vastness of the cosmos.
@@endoalley680 I doubt the animals in question see it that way.
@@endoalley680 so if I came up to you and punched you in the face, you would just shrug it off and say, ‘ah well, this act of violence is meaningless on the scale of the cosmos’?
@@sdrawkcabUK yes. I would feel that physical action most, you would assess the consequences of your action, family and people who witnessed the action would experience some effect. But the further away out there in the cosmos would not be impacted... Am I missing your point?0
It is so heart breaking that as the world talks never endingly about 'the environment' they are destroying every last bit of nature they can find including our human nature
Our 'nature' hasn't ever been defined. And yes 'environment' is often used as the excuse to do some odd stuff in the name of growth.
Isn’t that what the “unredeemed” narrative that he is talking about is kind of like though?
@@DJWESG1 Liberalism is a rejection of Nature.
@@neil5872 That us being unable to live in harmony with nature is our 'unredeemed' human nature? Is that what you mean?
Sure is ''heart breaking'' but not unexpected. When the Greens started in the 70's it was made clear the only 'solution' was to halt population growth. Sadly people like breeding and no UK governments were prepared to penalise people who had more than 1/2 children!
'Religion is man's search for God, Christianity is God's search for man' - Peter Kreeft.
🤫 Shshsh...Don't share the secret.
And when God truly finds us, Christianity is just another story to tell, in bemused and happy wonderment at the unlikely (though inevitable) meeting. "Ha! Do you remember how we got here? Wow!"
Not much of a God who creates create a religion to find a species that is all over the place.
@@thebeautifulones5436 The CCC teaches that we are summoned to a spiritual battle. It is up to you whether you accept. In hoc signo vinces +.
Thsts beautiful
It is partly, or even substantially, due to Unherd that Paul Kingsnorth has emerged as one of the most interesting and important thinkers of our time. This brief but bracing talk is yet another example of why he is so important.
In the years 600-200 BC in China, there was chaos and bloody battles....and the golden age for philosophy. They call it the Hundered schools of thought. Confucianism, Taoism and many other ways of thinking (believing) emerged.
A brilliant presentation! I found this via a presentation by Gavin Ashenden, who is excellent to listen to as well.
@@helendeacon7637 So did I 😊
It's been too long since someone shook up my expectations so beautifully. It is a wonderful change to be intellectually challenged rather than having my cortisol levels tweaked.
Reminding us of what actually is important. Thank you.
Great speech! I also came late in life to the Orthodox Church. Paul is right that there are things in Orthodoxy that used to be part of the common culture of Christians that have got lost along the way in other Christian sects.
Amazing talk. One quote that resonated with me was his comparison of the biblical trinity to the “modern trinity” of reason, science and technology.
Reason is logos, and logos is Jesus Christ (John 1:1).
Materialists have taken to worshipping the creation instead of the creator (Romans 1:25).
We’re coming to the end of the road. I hope his message finds good soil.
Good presentation. Clever man!
Well said!
WOW. A profound talk with deep meaning. Timely. Thank you! Namaste.
"Once you reject God, you are fated to try and replace him." That really hit me. Yes, our anchor is crumbling; our centre-point. I watch myself struggle between sitting with that mystery that is quite clearly beyond me and all living things, and being enthralled with this technologically driven world. But I feel a deep undercurrent of Divine invitation emerging. This is being felt by many. What a fascinating time to be alive.
"divine invitation" ... what a beautiful way to describe this feeling that I too have experienced, and in my own way, tried to accept.
That's all in your mind...
@@francoiswilliams Probably
As someone who went from total hedonism and atheism to a great respect for religion and a conservative inclination, this is precisely one of the big questions that I was pondering.
I don't know what you mean by "hedonism and atheism". Not believing that there is evidence to justify a belief in God does not make one a hedonist. If by hedonism you mean an inability to control your petty appetites. I am not religious. But I have always led a measured and thoughtful existence. Not shallow and craving pleasure. It is sometimes the Christians and religious that I meet who seem remarkably shallow. And in many cases weak of mind.
@@endoalley680 Five minutes on social media is enough to see that while you are right that some who claim to be people of faith are shallow many are those with little more than disdain for people of faith who are complete and utter deadbeats that are philosophically empty.
The most morally and intellectually vacuous people I have encountered in my nearly fifty years have been those who believe they're clever by virtue of their hating and ridiculing people of faith.
@@endoalley680 Also: "weak of mind"? The religious fervor with which people believe in the infallibility of their own dogma-politically speaking-shows a weakness of mind greater than that of the most fanatical and moronic of religious people. You need to pull your head out of your arse.
Same here. I take some issues with his apparent content for free speech (perhaps due to his more Orthodox views) but nevertheless I found him very interesting and agreed on the critics towards the modern trinity of reason, science and technology (even though I myself come from STEM, an area where people tend to be atheist and progressive).
@@endoalley680 With hedonism I mean that pleasure is your main goal in life. I'm not concluding people who claim to be religious are on average less shallow. Only that I personally was very shallow, and that was very much tied to my overall atheistic world view.
Bless you sir for presenting these truths. May the peace of our Lord Jesus Yeshua be upon you always
🙏🙌🏻❤️
This is probably one of the best talks I’ve heard on this topic. A very insightful analysis of the current situation. Especially the comment about it being time to choose your religion
"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s"
Wonderful wonderful thank you Paul for preaching the Gospel. Jesus Christ is alive (physically) and seated at the right hand of God, and we must choose between Him and the Devil. (I am not being pious, I mean this literally.)
Jesus is indeed, truly and magnificently, the visible image of the invisible God
Thank you for articulating this Paul Kingsnorth! I've been unable to get my head around this for a decade or more. The realisation of the need for religion is so important, and the lack of conscious religion is key to understanding the problems of our age. Problems that *seem* to be accelerating... Based on the symbols pumped into my brain from the available media.
Yes, at 1:46 this *_is_* what is there left to conserve, and that *_is_* the reason we were sent into the world, to preserve the human spirit in the difficult times to come. And to do that, God has sent a New Message into the world, a message of a thousand teachings. It's called - _The New Message from God_ and it contains the preparation for what we are here to do in the years ahead. God bless!
does it come in kindle edition?
Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle. In hoc signo vinces +.
Thanks for sharing!
there is no "new" message from God. for revelation from the true God, read the Bible. Lord bless
@@antoinettegabrielle3991 it's a bit arrogant to assume to know God's Will for all of humanity my friend. Think a bit about this.
"The great unsettling" - yes, that's exactly what's going on in the West.
This was truly eye opening, but Paul, whose writing I love, thinks that the battle is lost. Read the poem the combat by Edwin Muir. Just because the loudest voices say they have won, doesn’t make it so!
He is a Christian. The battle is inevitably lost, and that loss leads to the greatest victory of all - the resurrection.
@@cozzwozzle I hadn’t thought of that!
@@cozzwozzle Tolkien's "The Long Defeat".
Wow. Amazing talk. I became aware of PK maybe 6 years ago and found him to be an interesting thinker. How wonderful to hear that his curiosity has led him all the way to Orthodox Christianity. I am also a convert - a revert technically - to Christianity - and what's more, Catholic Christianity. So I really get his quip about being unhappy about that initially. But what a great talk. Thank you.
As someone having come back to Christianity a few years back, I see and agree with a lot of things with what Paul is attempting to describe. The only thing there has been and ever will be, is to repent and trust in our Savior Jesus Christ. May God have mercy on us sinners, and let us pray, and continue building a relationship with our Lord so we can receive his goodness and wisdom, while we are still here, and prepare for our place in eternal Heaven.
Like the Prophets in Biblical times - brutal message for brutal times! Paul makes no compromises for the faint-hearted, the snowflakes and the patching-up advocates. The warrior's stance for this battle is, of course, its paradox.
I am a veteran of religious enquiry and philosophical speculation .I loved this . Everything about this man is seeped in humility and understanding . Clearly you have studied much cos very few know of Guenons the "reign of quantity " .That genius and lover of God .Thank you so much . I feel steeled for the ordeals ahead
Bless you Paul, for sharing the gospel truth !
Have discovered Paul Kingsnorth recently, love what he has to say. He's making concrete for me the swirl of thoughts and feelings I have about our contemporary western world. The word that has kept coming to my mind as I read of the latest technological achievments and ideologies is hubris - something the gods take a dim view of and are quick to act against.
Brilliant speech
Thank you Paul.
Thank you, Unherd. Paul's insights are worth reflecting on.
This was an incredibly well argued talk!!
Seems I'll be a dissident in the comments. I LOVE Paul Kingsnorth - his wisdom and am grateful for him. But being an atheist I can attest that one doesn't need religion to revel in nature or to feel a rolling grief at what humanity is doing blindly to itself. I like the spirit of what he's saying; we've lost out way in the most profound sense.
I'm glad religion is a good filter to see all this and interpret it for some. But I think the more central core of our disease, is a loss of connection to nature and reality. Some conflate that loss with a loss of religion. But thankfully, one can see all the same phenomena he alludes to by just being a spiritual person. Being an atheist doesn't preclude being kind, being grateful, crediting grace for all that we experience, etc. In other words, there are may ways of viewing the current breakdown of civilization that we're currently facing without a religious filter.
Peace
Totally with you. If I have to believe in a God without evidence then humanity is not worth saving.
Pantheism? The trouble with nature worship is that nature is manifestly amoral. Humans feel the need to believe in a moral force of some kind.
@@gilespotter8274"If I have to believe in God without evidence..."
God doesn't FORCE you to believe in Him at all; that's His gift to you - free will.
It's YOUR CHOICE that matters, and God has clearly warned you where each choice leads, lest you have an excuse.
The scientific, mathematical, and logical evidence for an Intelligent Designer is overwhelming.
Science, mathematics, and logic DOESN'T support the Atheistic world view.
Anyone who believes it does clearly doesn't understand science, mathematics, and logic OR does, but chooses to bury their head in the sand - ever hopeful they're right, and when they die they'll be no more and, so, who cares.
It's YOUR CHOICE to believe in the mathematical improbability of a naturalistic origin for our Universe, the fine tuning of our Universe (it's not 'finely tuned', it's PERFECTLY tuned), and abiogenesis (the origin of life).
When the stochastic probability of all the above is ZERO, it takes faith in secular science (aka as 'balls of steel') to believe there's no God.
@ianshand6094 some of us rational beings cannot make the leap of faith without evidence. If God is omnipotent & benevolent then our world doesn't reflect that, so forgive our incredulity
Listened to the whole talk and really enjoyed it. Thanks!
The issue I am having is the pushing of this transhumanist agenda. As an mechanical engineer I just want to design and built beautiful things with my bare hands. Enjoy the old crafts and teach that to next/future generations.
Cheering to read this..pass on the old crafts ...and some fundamental attitudes of honesty, curtesy, responsibility, respect , honor..... A SOLID BASE FOR A RE.START.
@@scarletpimpernel353 thank you! Appreciate that ❤️
We must choose, or the choice will be made for us..very sound . Thank you and blessings from Sydney Australia .
I loved this and will listen to it again. I long for conversations like this with others as the time for trivial conversation has passed.
Extremely impressive talk, I'd love to meet Mr. Kingsnorth.
Any origin story of the West which doesn't even mention the Greeks sounds quite silly.
The Creation story comes from stories, mythologies, oral traditions and worldviews that predate Greek mythology. The Creation story in Genesis remembers that human beings once didn't wear clothes(!). Imagine how old the origins of that story must be. It must be tens of thousands of years old. It could be over a hundred thousand years old. When you start to understand the Creation story as a rich metaphorical version of real history, it's eye-opening. The Creation story remembers that we were once hunter-gatherers, and that agriculture made our lives much harder, and was a bad development. It recognizes that with knowledge comes morals, and that we are not ready for knowledge. The Creation story is fascinating, when we stop reading it as either meaningless mythology, or literal history.
@@the81kid I agree with all this, but in this talk "creation story" is being used in a broader sense of the core ideas, values and morals of Christianity on which the West is based. The talk is basically lamenting the decline in belief in those fundamental ideas leading to the problems we see in the West today. But the West isn't built just on those ideas. While they may be important, at least as important are the rational and philosophical ideas of ancient Greece.
The Greeks didn’t come to so much prominence in the West until Christianity started cracking up in the Renaissance, when the developing Humanism and then the Enlightenment needed more explicit models for how to live in a human-to-human social/urban world. Aristotle of course was crucial in the Middle Ages, but he was seen very much through (St Thomas’s) Christian lens. The first 1400-1500 years really are overwhelmingly Christian.
@@julianchase95 Depends when you start counting the "first" 1400-1500 years. I'd say christianity didn't amount to much of an influence on the West till about 300AD. There was a whole 800 year period *before* that when the West's intellectual ethos was basically Greek, either directly or via Rome.
And then I'd say the West didn't really get going as an influential and coherent force until the Renaissance (and even before that people like Aquinas) brought back those Greek ideas into the mainstream again.
Thank you. God Bless you.🙏
The first sane talk I’ve heard in a long time.
Everything in Canada, has been flipped on its head: family, demographics, nationality, gender, currency value, truth, education, etc.
Love this and love Paul Kingsnorth
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Thank you for having Paul here again! ❤
Charles Eisenstein and many other great thinker/writer are a treat.
This was one of the best talks I have heard in a very long time. His clarion thoughts make so much sense in this day of chaotic thoughts. There is sanity & has a name - God. God is many “I am’s” & I’m sure I Am sanity is true.
Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue Of Nationalism, is an extremely important contribution to this question of conservatism. Dichotomies have their ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ dangers and it is with that in mind that I quoted Hazony:
“I do not suppose that the case for nationalism is unequivocal. Considerations can be mustered in favor of each of these theories. But what cannot be done without obfuscation is to avoid choosing between the two positions: Either you support, in principle, the ideal of an international government or regime that imposes its will on subject nations when its officials regard this as necessary; or you believe that nations should be free to set their own course in the absence of such an international government or regime.”
If that’s true we would do well to familiarise ourselves with his important thesis; Hazony brilliantly lays out the principles of the political order of independent national states.
Wow. Powerful. And frightening.
That was powerful.
I could listen to Paul Kingsnorth all day..
He seems like a nice enough fellow.
Powerful talk on what is indeed happening, where things are headed, and the powerful consequences of what people think is true and reality, also inescapable religious faith and creeds.
I used to say.. ten years ago..the children born today will not live to die remaining to be human as they were born to be, considering where things are heading..
and now it appears that can be said for our own prior generations :(
Just horrific what these technocrats espouse in the world now. God help us all
Children born today will also be living in a Muslim-majority UK by the time they're middle aged.
Fascinating talk. Wasn't what I expected, but well worth listening to!
I needed to hear this.
This us the second I have heard you speak. Thank You for Shareing. We need people like you to share. Praying for your continueing Growth in the LORD!
Thank you Paul for your talk 🙏
Thank you Paul - you reframed the word 'religion' for me which I've avoided for decades. Realise I've always been 'religious' in the sense of the sacredness of life. Have shared!
Thank you. I get a sense there is many people who think the same but are disjointed and disconnected from what we considered from our youth - albeit beginning to erode even then - as being more clearly evident continuous and true. That certainty now feels dead and stolen from us as sure as sure can be. You see I too have come to realise everything is ethereal everything is spirit. I see now what we perceive as solidity is in essence of vibration a cosmic tune which differs only in frequency and intensity to give us - one of many consciousness on the earth - a pretence of understanding. I've like everyone here were indoctrinated to believe the mechanical scientific viewpoint that - as you said - the appreciation of the spirit/essential/ external being was confined to a place called a church for an hour on Sunday and that was it. So here we are, what are we facing? Well one, and the one I tend to now believe is we are reaching not only a technological singularity but also the hiatus of habitual hubris conceit genuine ignorance and stupidity which was 400 years in the making. Yes it seems we are now faced with a choice do we humbly accept we are just another facet in the unending mind of God or do we become transhuman and seek to imitate bast#rdise and ultimately destroy not only nature but God.
Thank you!
It is, indeed, an excellent diagnosis. My problem is what do we mean by the West. And the West, whatever this designates, was also founded by the Greco-Roman antiquity, which is not yet a part of Abrahamic foundational story. This is what bothers me. Is the only answer - to pray?
Timely and succinct. Great speech.
Could we have a second part of this talk? Some of these ideas I have been saying to myself for years. And the world has changed enourmously over the last 3 years. It does seem very surreal and strange.
I lived for some years in a third world African Muslim community that had no modern technology.
I managed to stay healthy for the three years I lived there but when I came home and had various tests done it turned out that I had cystic amoebic dysentery that if left untreated could have killed me.
I was very grateful for the antibiotics that cleared it up quickly and painlessly.
God bless modern medicine!
My toilet was a deep hole in the ground at the end of the garden which worked fine and I would like to see flush toilets replaced with composting ones everywhere.
Toilet paper was not needed as we washed with water from a jug.
Even here in the UK I still do this because it is much cleaner and toilet paper is a major pollutant.
There was no running water so we had to fetch the water daily from the stream and fill large unfired clay urns which kept it wonderfully cool despite the extreme heat.
Needless to say this job - like all the heavy work - was done by the women.
I became a vegetarian because the stench of the meat market - where unrefrigerated sides of beef were hung in the blazing sun black with flies - made me heave.
We cooked on charcoal burners. and lit our mud brick houses with kerosene lamps.
I slept out under the stars on a bed made from thick branches and woven with string and a mattress stuffed with raw cotton.
It was very comfortable and I really miss sleeping out under the stars.
The boiling daytime heat was exhausting and I was always drenched in sweat.
The winters were a blessed if short relief.
I was generally happy because the people were incredibly kind and welcoming and basically looked after me as I was at first as helpless as a baby.
But I was very happy to go home to the UK for three months every summer and have a taste of life under the Machine with all its wonderful comforts.
I always brought a suitcase back full of stuff people had asked me for that was not available to them.
I especially remember thermal underwear and Head and Shoulders shampoo being requested. And English textbooks.
The people seemed happy with their lot until I came to know their world better.
The women had no human rights.
They were subjected to full pharaonic FGM at a young age performed by a woman with a razor blade and some antiseptic.
Some of them died but still the practice continued because the men insisted.
Girls were given at a very young age in marriage to much older men - basically sold off to the highest bidder.
The FGM made childbirth incredibly dangerous and the death rate was high.
They would beg me to bring them back 'the magic pill that stops you from having babies'.
Everybody prayed five times a day and went to the mosque on Friday.
They were a deeply religious community.
This did not prevent the married men from making passes at the English women.
Then there was a coup and I had to leave as non-Muslims were no longer welcome.
This experience made me very very grateful to have been born in the modern industrialised secular west.
The women would sometimes joke that they wished they could change places with me - but they were only half joking.
From the outside the place I lived looked like Eden.
Rural, unspoilt, close knit and deeply religious.
But I knew my stay was temporary and I could return to the modern world whenever I chose.
The local women were stuck there living what was basically an Old Testament life.
Nowadays I am very glad I live in the godless lands and understand why so many from the god-fearing world want to come here.
I have Muslim friends who have settled here and are very happy to live among the unbelievers in the lands of the Snake and the Machine.
For all its faults the modern world is undeniably a better place to be - especially if you are a woman.
Thank you for sharing your experience! Fascinating! Unsurprising but still fascinating. Why do human beings cling to/perpetuate destructive practices like FGM? Sigh
It’s not one or the other though
@@t3br00k35 I would love to live in a world which combined all the positives of my African experience - close knit community, close connection to nature, peace, quiet and simplicity and above all kind and caring neighbours (without whom I would not have coped) with all the positives of modern western society - good medical care, good education, fairness and equality between men and women and tolerance towards those who are different but doing no harm - without any of the evils such as rampant heartless profiteering, social alienation, chronic loneliness, family breakdown and vast, ugly, alienating, polluted cities.
@@lostcause6100 A beautiful vision. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
@@lostcause6100 The mistake is that these tradeoffs are necessary, or that "progress" is a sort of zero-sum game. The gain of some of these positive things does not inherently mean that other positive things must be lost, as if, for instance, indoor plumbing and modern medicine have necessary costs of broken families and high divorce rates. As the other commenter said, it isn't one or the other.
Also, we should avoid the related notion that the tangible goods are always of more value than the intangible ones. This is an assumption of the very "reign of quantity" that Paul was referring to. The fact is that if you privilege what is measurable over what isn't, the tally of measurables -- that which can be quantified -- will always tilt the scales in that direction. See Wendell Berry's "What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth" for more on this observation.
Very good summary of the modern dilemma. I've pondered at times if we might get a good old fashion revival in the West.
Alas, chaos first.. then feichimís (we'll see in Gaelic)
Please have Jonathan Pageau on this channel.
Loved the comments about the wonderful pace of Ireland. Strange that people didn't chuckle with him.
Paul is so thought-provoking. I could listen to him all day. The mis-spelling of the last word of the subtitles adds weight to his argument.
Love this talk - so many ideas and so much sense !!??
Well, it's quite the spectacle to witness folk trying to recreate nature, humanity, and even divinity in their own image, don't you think? But it's nothing new. We've had a couple of recent examples like Nazism and Communism. But here's what tickles me pink: Christianity held its ground and ultimately triumphed over the lot! How amazing, to ponder how faith can weather the ages and come out on top?
"For our God hath blessed creation,
Calling it good. I know
What spirit with whom you blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with his hand;
Yet by God's death the stars shall stand
And the small apples grow."
G.K. Chesterton, 'The Ballad of the White Horse'
Thank you.
Excellent presentation, is it the same thoughts I've been mulling over for several years now.
Hogwash
You have become clearer, more handsome and well , glory to God
Our war is already won; Christ is risen ☦️🙏🏼☦️ and only the battles remain!
I figured this out as a teenager. Became a practicing Buddhist/Taoist. I'm glad to see that many of my hardcore "ATHEIST" friends have come around to appreciate what Paul describes. Honestly, I'm still surprised many people have not realized this. Not yet.
You're not alone but you/we are still a tiny minority.. the others seem to me to be indistinguishable from lemmings.
@@oftbanned101 Cattle and lemmings. Yes. Many aren't energetic enough to be like lemmings.
Brilliant but frightening.
After a day pondering this topic, this is exactly what I needed to hear tonight.
Interesting talk! One small thing: When God created human persons on the sixth day, it is correct that it is not stated that God saw that it was good. It is stated that God saw that it was very good: Genesis 1:31 "And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day."
Interesting talk. Unfortunately, going back to some form of Christian belief doesn't really seem like a viable option for the majority of people in the West at this point. I'd like to hear more about the nature of the speaker's faith. I have the impression that he has found God due to the insight that human beings are religious animals. If that's the case, his attitude is lightyears away from the spirituality infused vision of the world he assumes to be the norm in pre-enlightenment days. His intellectual development would have been by definition impossible then.
The problem of wanting to believe in God because it would be a good idea to do so is not new by any means. Nietzsche wrestled with it and came up with an interesting answer: replacing religion with art. What is the core of the religious hunger which human beings supposedly have? Does Mozart's music nourish it? How about Wagner's? Roger Scruton thought so. Somebody here in the comments writes about having a profound religious experience in St Mark's Basilica. Isn't that what the building is designed to do?
Isn't it the beauty of the building that induces the experience, completely independent of God's existence? As the speaker says, human are religious animals. Religion, it seems to me, isn't about the existence of a God, especially not the petty tyrant that has rightly become obsolete.It's about the experience of transcendence, the loss of the prison of the ego. To use the hippy sounding short hand: God is Love. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche reached unique and interesting conclusions to solve the problem the speaker wrestled with. They did so more than century ago. Alan Watts made an interesting contribution in the 20th century.
Talking about Watts: Buddhism has solved the problem in the most elegant and lucid way. It's not as if Christianity is the only game in town. Comparing the elegance and intellectual level of Buddhist thought with the Christian story is like comparing the bible to a comic book. I'm all for humility. It seems to me that Christians need to learn a little humility and do what Schopenhauer did: immerse themselves in the depth and elegance of Eastern thought.
Maybe Christianity isn' the pinnacle of religious thought. Maybe we shouldn't go back to Christianity but move forward, merging Eastern and evolutionary thinking, embracing our kinship with all other animals and learn to cherish the beautiful truth of the connectedness of all life. Sounds more appealing than trying to reanimate the corpse of Christianity. Probably has a better chance of success, as well.
The problem with Buddhism is that it is too austere and abstract for most people to grasp. A religion which says that the best thing to do in life is to renounce all desire and spend all day meditating is a hard sell. The Abrahamic faiths have been so successful as they are firmly rooted in the messiness of human life and day to day existence
@@sdrawkcabUK My understanding of Buddhist teaching isn't that everyone should become a monk and renounce the active life. I understand the main teaching to be the liberation from the illusion of the self, the fundamental understanding that it isn't real and attachment to it is the root of suffering. Teaching this through self observation is the point of meditation. Psychedelic experience teaches the same lesson, if things go well. That to me seems to be at the core of religion:Christian mysticism, Rumi in Islam, they all point into the same direction.
@counselthyself Interesting. Is this the kind of gnosticism which is seen as heretical by some fractions of Christianity, i.e. the idea of the world being a prison created by the demiurge and the attainment of knowledge as a way of liberation from the prison?
That is exactly what Jesus did, he was making all things new. You can't put a new cloth to an old garment without it tearing away. In making all things new we still have to work through the tools at/of our convenience, our words and our humanity. A new garment still has to fit the person for its' purpose. It's interesting that Paul Kingsnorth in his talk mentions how "unfit" we were in the garden of Eden, to take on rational thought. We weren't ready for it. Every/thing is a process, yet we only see the "thing" that is immediately current.
Jesus, in making all things new, arose out of the compelling "compost" of Judaism. To rebuild something is no to throw everything away but to take the best of something and re- work it. That is the only way to have a continuing story. Dare I say, every other way leads to dis- connectedness.
So yes, all stories need to be brought together to connect the whole of humanity together, so that we can move forward as a collective humanity.
Unfortunately, one side wants to eliminate God and the continuing story of Jesus and equate it with "nothing", which by definition, is a problem for the "living", whereas the other side has written into the story the "falling away" of humanity and a remedy back to it. If as Paul Kingsnorth points out, we have to choose, (which in a way is a contradiction based on "right & wrong"), then one necessarily clings to life without the need for choice, because, "nowhere is there nothing" , something even the eastern mystics have to come to terms with.
Yes Paul Kingsnorth, thankyou for speaking up and thankyou Rene Lindner for you valuable insight.
The story continues, there is ultimately no choice.
(We are positioned into choice by a feeling of separateness, isolation and dis- connectedness, without which we would not have to choose).😅
To me, Christianity is not one, but two stories. The story of constantly fighting something evil, and the story of endless care = the story of the western world today. 40-60 million people have been force to flee their home/land due to US/NATO wars against "evil dictators" last decades (US study). Woke persons are screaming in the streets due to care for transgenders (but telling the refugees to stay out of their country).
Pray, for miracles at this point.
Excellent!
Hope to meet Freddy because he asks the right questions that is why I watch all from San Francisco last time in London was honeymoon 1978. I 💕 England my ancestors arrived from Normandy with William still in Kent as my dad located in 1943.
Amen Paul!
WOW ! SO TRUE....EVERY BIT OF IT....THANK YOU FOR THIS GIFT OF TRUTH ! One way or another we will come back to this, because it is the TRUTH.....which of course cannot die.....because TRUTH is eternal! All we have done is try to bury it....very deeply, but earthquakes, volcanos, disasters have a way of bringing buried truth out into the light.....may we unbury the TRUTH soon...to halt our self destruction !
When and what was the golden age of Christendom that is worthy of conservation? If you’re orthodox or catholic, 1517 marks a shift in Christendom away from tradition and the transcendent order towards a more individualized and rational interpretation of the Bible.
Did it only exist during the spread of the early church, or was it also present during the Roman Empire? I’m struggling to see what was worth conserving at a societal scale during any of these times - including our own. During your preferred period of Christendom, what aspects do you consider as good/worthy of conserving? Who were these aspects good for? Note that the further back you go in modern history in search of this mythical Christendom (and any other tradition), the more coercion/force was used to ensure traditional/theocratic social values.
I feel that people are drawn to the ideology of progress / human transcendence because there has never been a mythical Christendom or any other traditional ideal past (or any contemporary society). The abject failures of history motivate continuous change and so we’re doomed to keep building on top of broken foundations. I agree that we should be praying but not for some mythical past. And I’m doubtful that we should be praying for the dominion of any one religious ideology. I don’t think that the pockets of human community that have been in transcendent communion with the divine have been isolated to any one religion/ideology.
Back in the 60s & early 70s if you were invested in protecting nature you were labelled a 'conservationist'. The label 'environmentalist' came in the late 70s/early 80s. That's possibly when the rot set in. Conservation is a word rarely used now.
These uses of language are not an accident.
The Machine of Huxley, Wells,
Well, in fact, the West begins in ancient Greece, a beautifully pagan Greece, and that civilisatiion and others steeped in wisdom around the Mediterranean gained and spread influence, until much later the development of a sect of followers of a prophet managed to gain legitimacy and adoption adoption by Rome (despite its tendency for riots and destruction in the name of their sect and prophet), which then worked hand in hand with that Church to spread its empire. The Church continued in the business of working with kings, emperors and empires until fairly recently. While I expect that humans along with all other animals lived together in what we would certainly call a garden - what we would now most likely call a "wilderness" (a rather recent word, that) in most cases, and in culturally advanced world-sensitive ways, many of them, until the church and Empire came along. There is a sacred living world, and we know it through being, and across cultures, since long before the Church came along. As the people of the coast here put it, everything is connected everything else (not in some mushy kind of way, but through reciprocity of being), and in that relational reciprocity we have obligations, and also law, or protocol for right action in relation to all that is. Again, long before the Church came along and really messed things up. The West and the Church it created ripped humans out the garden wherever they showed up.
The morals of ancient Greece and Rome were certainly not Western. Slavery and infanticide were commonplace then. Our Western ethics are still essentially Christian.
Superb!
Try conserving the welfare state, traditional radical politics and critique of power.
Is that the critique of all power, whomever has it?
I agree with having a welfare state, but does that really separate the West from the East?
The Reign of Quantity - wow that really resonated with me. I will give it a read.
Seems especially relevant given AIs ability to mass produce everything
The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times ... Rene Guenon
I have a feeling this speech is actually mostly motivated by AI, but that the topic is sort of sandwiched in the middle of it. I don't blame him. For the topic or the sandiwching. I'm a fairly left-leaning software engineer that's worked in San Francisco and even so, I've kind of taken to praying a bit, tbh.
Is there a question and answer portion of this talk?
"sort of came over from Ireland" Sort of?
Interesting, deep. Thank you.
What is there left to conserve?
What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
Truly lovely. Who is it?
@@katl6320 Ezra Pound
"God mit uns" "In God we trust" Now "In power we trust",what is next?who am I?
Yes, all we can do is pray, live our Christian belief and trust in God, he is in control.
Paul's recounting of the Genesis story reminded me how much vulgarity there is in scripture-how much commonness. Its emphasis on villains (the serpent, Satan, women) means it's always got its on eye on someone to blame. That's a direct appeal to the worst in us, our ever-ready resentment and vindictiveness. It's no surprise this kind of religion would have been popular before people learned to be embarrassed by their pettiness.
I thought we were conserving the water, trees, animals, etc. Maybe what is left of the Garden.
Excellent.
Why Do Some People Find Thrill-Seeking Activities Such as Bungee Jumping or Skydiving Exciting Rather Than Scary?
Whether it is bungee jumping, skydiving, other extreme sports, thrill-seeking theme park rides and even scary movies, in such instances we want to feel the limit and how we breach it: that we reach a state beyond our capabilities.
We then enjoy the state. There is pleasure in exercising a certain level of control over fear.
The pleasure of having control over fear then becomes stronger than the instinct of fear that surfaces.
When fear dominates us, it feels like it penetrates every cell of our bodies, all the way to our bones’ marrow. That is why the pleasure we experience when we feel a certain level of control over fear is very powerful.
However, if we felt that our lives had a higher eternal purpose, and we set ourselves on a path to attain that purpose, we would then feel no need for these kinds of transient pleasures, no matter how strong they are.
We would also then not fear anything because we would see that we are controlled by the upper force, which wishes solely to develop us in order to benefit us with its eternal and perfect quality of love, bestowal and connection.
We have forgotten the social messages that are the root of Christianity .. we have forgotten what set us apart from other civilisations .. we need to go back and relearn what the core central tenants of western civilisation are again .. and then decide what to do with re-establishing what is worth conserving ..
This, kind of unassuming, comment is actually very worth reflecting on at a deep level.
@@The2realistic Thought twice about writing it tbh .. thought lots of people would think I am mad .. but I said what the heck!
I am not particularly religious full disclaimer .. but to my mind (I am very analytical) there is loads and loads of very good social structures implicit in Christianity .. it is a forgiving religion .. phrases like "let he who has sinned cast the first stone" etc underpin this .. and this is actually very good for society because it creates a framework making it easier for people to say they got it wrong ..
And on and on
@@dendradwar9464 Right, we live in very unforgiving times and this is likely related to a loss of spirituality and community as that brings out the worst in people. Christendom was surely not perfect but we have probably forgotten some of its benefits. I'm not religious either, but there is a sense of loss of the sacred dimension to life in our current days which I find disturbing.
brilliant
Everything is religious - or spiritual. So true. How much has the evil one done in my own life, through society, environmental changes, living my own separate life, trying to be my own God? ---- community living is one way needed to break out of this madness. (only in my opinion...) Let's get back to the garden...
The means to community should be made available but community is not for everyone, not the very good or the very bad.
@@gillps5130 Thank you, yes, God knows what each one of us needs to be His hand, His instrument to help others. I am just seeing how setting up people in loneliness is one of the main ways of the enemy to destroy and hurt and make people sick in heart, body and mind, to stop His love of loving one another.
Wow!