To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera

Monday, February 24, 2020

What is required is an overcoming of the Age of Materialism

What is required is an overcoming of the Age of Materialism. This looms over the entirety of the world, obliterating the few vestiges of tradition with its cultural pathogens. The contention here is that man must reconnect with the divine. Those who rebel against the present Zeitgeist or Spirit of the Age, generally oppose its symptoms, but not the root cause which is of a spiritual character. They are themselves caught up in the materialistic quagmire. Like Karl Marx, their solutions therefore become mirror images rather than those of transcendence. Hence, “races” are defined in materialistic terms. Measuring physiological indices does not tell anything about the élan of a “race” any more than statistics on the gross national product inform about the élan of a nation other than from an economist’s viewpoint.

Conclusions are drawn about why civilisations fall that are fallacious and deflect from the actual reasons. Such assumptions also lead to a preoccupation with secondary symptoms of decline, such as immigration, and again causes are obscured.

Additionally, by neglecting to consider whether the very notions of “progress” and “evolution” are even legitimate, the contagion of the Age is accepted and those who revolt against the symptoms of decay put themselves on the defensive by accepting the assumptions of the opposition. Race-materialism implies the acceptance of evolution and the illusion of “progress”. By accepting such assumptions there is an implicit acceptance of the liberal, positivist, and universalist ideologies that are part of the process of decay. Posited here instead is a total rejection of the modern world under the thrall of the spirit of mammon.

Kerry Bolton
The Decline and Fall of Civilizations

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