Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Long Dead Gods

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March 17, 2025 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

11:00

Long Dead Gods

On spiritual renewal. Get Islander #3 here: https://shop.lotuseaters.com/

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	There is an article in issue 3 of Islander which haunts my thoughts and keeps raising itself in the back of my mind when I am trying to concentrate on something else.
	The implications of it are difficult to grapple with and puts us in a strange and unnerving place with regards to the project of saving the West and what that is even supposed to mean.
	Frankly, I think this video will not be well enjoyed by many people, but I think this is something which must be admitted if we are to properly overcome our current predicament.
	The article itself is entitled In the Shadow of Long Dead Gods, and it's written by Callum Darrow, and it makes for a difficult read.
	This is not due to its style or prose, but the fundamental problem it raises with regards to the spiritual revival of the West.
	Darrow begins with Nietzsche's famous observation that God is dead and we have killed him, and traces this path through how our deepest religious traditions and institutions, those which uphold, reproduce and transmit them, have become hollowed out shells of themselves.
	Instead of upholding Christian virtues, reproducing Christian culture and transmitting them to our children, they are instead engines of woke ideology, which wear the aesthetic of Christianity whilst churning out nothing but soul-destroying modernity.
	Darrick says, If we are to regain our footing and look towards a more hopeful future, what is needed is a spiritual rebirth that is rooted not in theses about the nature of reality, but rather an orientation towards the world that fosters connection and mystery.
	This re-enchanting of the world can be understood as a mode of being that does not seek to understand everything in it conceptually or even procedurally, but rather to fully participate in its unfolding.
	Darrow is correct that the West is in dire need of a spiritual rebirth, a re-enchanting of the world, so that we are put once more in the pursuit of theological mysteries, but it's difficult to see how this could come about whilst we are still trapped within the scientific paradigm.
	I don't want to be pessimistic, nor do I wish to be interpreted as discouraging religiosity, but I do feel that we have to be honest and realistic about the limitations of such a project within the current situation.
	I also don't want my religious views to feel as though I am attacking them here, because I'm not.
	I appreciate your faith, and I feel that being a friend of Christianity, whilst not being a Christian myself, instills in me a duty to communicate to you what I can see holding you back.
	I worry that if your efforts continue down the channel established for them, that they will flow into a cultural cul-de-sac and be contained to only those superficial aesthetic attributes which least conflict with modernity.
	You will be permitted to be Christian only as far as your Christianity operates in tandem with liberal ideology.
	I see in the modern Christian revivalist movement a kind of wistfulness for something that is not really present now.
	It feels that the Christian revivalists are holding on to the past and dragging it into the future to prevent it from being lost, rather than being a part of something that is bursting forth and unfolding that thing which itself is shaping the future.
	And this, of course, is entirely admirable on their part.
	Without their efforts, Christianity would be lost entirely.
	The issue with Christian revival is not its precepts, but in the fact that it is contained within the frame of modernity.
	This allows the atheistic society in which it is permitted to exist, circumscribed by various liberal dogmas, to represent it as a museum piece in the cultural history of the West as progress marches forward.
	Any relevance Christianity might have had as a living institution may only be done under the auspices of liberal ideology.
	And so, rather than spreading the true belief of Jesus Christ, what it does instead is create more believers in transgenderism and human rights.
	This oppressive atmosphere ensures a lack of authenticity in modern Christians, which holds them back from being the true wellspring of culture, no matter how much they themselves personally believe.
	And I don't doubt their belief, and I don't blame them for this state of affairs either.
	We are all complicit with our oppression, because the liberal order is so efficient at containing the things it supersedes.
	This concession does have a price though, which is to ensure that modern Christians, like modern Muslims, Jews, and pagans, are forced to live inauthentically as Christians, Muslims, Jews, and pagans.
	I don't want to be misinterpreted as encouraging anything here either, as I don't think it is possible for these religions to break out of this frame.
	Not only would it require acts that would be widely regarded as completely irrational, immoral and destructive, but I think that ultimately it would require the sacrifice of the very system that brought about such a state of affairs, and put simply, people won't accept it.
	More than that, though, is that the reason that liberalism came to conquer religion within the bounds of once religious societies is that it moves on a different plane to the religious impulse and claims to have no concept of the religious about it.
	This allows it to appear innocuous and irrelevant to religious discourse, while at the same time containing within itself the world-levelling power of a purely materialist explanation of the universe.
	This eventuality was spotted coming over the horizon too.
	Even in the days of John Locke, it was observed by people at the time that the idea of a purely sensuous and mechanical universe would slowly cause an increase of unbelief.
	And the only response that Locke could muster to this objection was that atheism ought to be outlawed.
	However, one cannot legislate against belief, one can only legislate against behaviour, and if true belief in God as the maker and ordainer of the universe withered on the vine, then there is nothing the state can do to stop it.
	The emergence of this new atheistic civilization was becoming apparent even in the beginnings of the 20th century, and by the middle of the 20th century, it was clear that it probably couldn't be stopped.
	In his notes on culture, T.S. Eliot argues against the piece in a 1944 edition of the Sunday Times by Professor Harold Lasky, in which Lasky argues that Winston Churchill's desire to rebuild traditional Britain can't be done, and instead, quote, there must be a new Britain in a new civilization.
	Elliot concedes that it is entirely likely a radical new civilization was coming about, but the people of their time had no idea what this civilization would look like, nor whether it would be good or bad.
	More importantly, Elliot points out that we would not know what it feels like to live in such a new civilization.
	Well, we are living in their new civilization now, and it seems that actually, very few people are happy with it.
	Elliot observes that the true measure of a religion is not in that which people profess, but instead that which they do in their day-to-day lives.
	He says, We may go further and ask whether what we call the culture and what we call the religion of a people are not different aspects of the same thing, the culture being essentially the incarnation of the religion of a people.
	And I think in this he's right.
	In the 1940s, atheists in England still lived Christian lives.
	In the 2020s, Christians live atheist lives.
	We can see how the materialist revolution has taken over the entirety of the West and puts the religions in their boxed cubicles as museum pieces, and people look at those few who still hold to them as barbarous enough to follow these old creeds.
	This fundamental lack of authenticity is part of the reason that I think Western chauvinists are worried about Islam.
	It appears from the outside that Muslims truly live and breathe their faith, whereas Christians don't.
	Indeed, this is one of the points of Muslim hostility towards the West.
	Many of them look at us as irreligious degenerates, whilst they go to mosque and pray five times a day.
	However, it seems that there is a declining religiosity in Islamic countries too.
	Their slower religious decline is not because of some intrinsic property of Islam, as some people believe, but instead simply through a lack of proximity.
	The continual march of progress will consume everything, until, including even Islam itself, is reduced to a historical aesthetic, to be worn for sentimental reasons rather than lived as an authentic doctrine, and they are well aware of this.
	To return to Darok's article, he ends it with the following.
	This is now our most pressing priority.
	A reinvigoration of our civilization can only come from a spiritual rebirth.
	Political victories are fleeting.
	The fire and energy they create dissipates quickly when they collide with the realities of material decline.
	Only a realignment of our societies towards the sacred can hope to provide the momentum needed to survive this long winter.
	The future will be built by will and faith alone.
	And if we cannot find a new centre to orient ourselves around, we will suffer the fate of all societies that lack spiritual will, to be conquered by those who do not.
	And he is of course correct.
	We seem to have accurately diagnosed the problem, but so far we have found no way out of the malaise.
	The incarnation of our revealed religion is entirely materialistic and condemns us to this paradigm whether we like it or not, because this is what we live, and while we live it, things will remain the same.
	Many people will interpret this passage as him warning about Islam, but no, Islam is of the same metaphysical stuff as the other religions.
	It indeed finds itself withering on the vine as the other religions.
	Perhaps a little slower, but inevitably all the same.
	As of yet we have found no answer to this problem, and we will continue searching.
	And finding a way out of this mess is what Islander is about.
	Without digging down through these layers, we'll be forever contained within the paradigm that is strangling the life out of our civilizations.
	And if you would like to support us in this endeavour, you can purchase issue 3 of Islander using the link in the description.

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