Esoterism / Traditionalism / Inward Focus -- general thread

[basketweaver]

I figured that since we have a lot of our Traditionalism (capital T) shitposts in the IRC channel, it might as well be helpful to have some discussions in a general thread, where we can post news updates, readings/excerpts/quotations, and questions to meditate on. Everyone who is interested in Traditionalism or esoterism is welcome; I think that these schools of thinking have a lot of underrepresented wisdom which you can use to enrich your everyday life.

What is Traditionalism? I can't really summarize the whole body of belief in just a few sentences, but I can give you some bullet points:

• Truth, wisdom, and enlightenment are things which are extremely difficult to obtain. Pure democracy doesn't make sense because you're essentially diluting extremely rare wisdom in an ocean of ignorance.
• The "common sense" of modernity is not really common sense at all. Think about how the common sense of the Dark Ages is totally incompatible with a modern worldview. A lot of the beliefs that modern people have are extremely recent, and we should be skeptical. Five hundred years from now, people might even consider the 21st century to be a Dark Age. Our adherence to "common sense" is something that limits us. We should seek to transcend our common sense and try to have a full picture of the Truth.
• Symbols, religions, cultures, legacies, and inherited traditions are something that are extremely useful and important to understanding the world. If you don't understand your own history, you're missing out on some of the great truths that people before you have discovered independently.

You can learn more of it on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_School. A lot of the belief has been kind of mixed around with Eastern philosophy, modern far-right movements, Buddhism, and Neo-Nazi stuff. But being a Traditionalist doesn't mean you have to be a Nazi or a Fascist (there are very many Traditionalist writers who lived during the times of Nazism and Fascism and actively spoke against those movements). It also doesn't mean you have to be a Buddhist, but perhaps that helps :^).

What is esoterism? Let's do bullet points again.

• Self-awareness and openness are extremely important. If you box yourself in by holding onto presumptions or being attached to circumstantial beliefs, you are limiting yourself. Even if you are a flawed human being, you can transcend many of these flaws by understanding what they are and where they come from rather than burying them away, pretending that the flaws are good, or ignoring them.
• Language, logic, and rationality are all incredibly overrated. They're very important to learning, but they are not sufficient by themselves. Many of the highest truths can't be summarized in words.
• Labels, distinctions, and seeming contradictions don't really matter at all. Being an enlightened person means having an extremely hyper-cosmopolitan worldview which is as broad as the universe and as deep as the transcendent.
• Experience and action are very important tools of learning. Climbing Mt. Everest, becoming president of the United States, or living as a beggar might teach you much more than even the best books.
• There's a lot of seemingly-dumb shit in religions. Who wants to meditate for 40 days or recite the names of Allah for hours or learn about the Holy Trinity? But meditating on these seemingly-dumb concepts can actually provoke higher learning. Think about how you had to learn "2+2=4" or count with apples before you could graduate to Algebra and Calculus. Things like the names of Allah or the Holy Trinity can be just like this; even if you don't believe them to be literally true, they can be very useful as a way of stimulating your mind and paving the way for greater learning.

[Bamyasi]

Thanks for making a thread.

What's your favorite esoteric school?

[basketweaver]

I really like Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. So far, its the only school of philosophy I've found that independently blends together many of the good concepts from Daoism, Buddhism, Platonism, and Aristotelianism without much extra bad baggage. Comparative religions shitpost follows:

I don't really "enjoy" Buddhism because of its focus on the ultimate suffering of life, the denial of an inner Self, and its refusal to answer some key metaphysical questions. But I do think that "well-performed, enlightened Buddhism" is basically the same as Advaita Vedanta. Tantric Buddhism / Vajrayana, in particular, is really sophisticated and worth learning IMO.

I really like non-pagan Daoism but I think it's ultimately an incomplete framework. There are a lot of vague holes and unanswered questions that you basically have to answer by yourself, with your own projections, which make it a difficult tool of learning and subject to wrong interpretations.

Aristotelianism is really good but I think it's too realist and attached to practicality. I think Platonism is cool but it doesn't answer the full picture.

Finally, I've been a very vocal defender of the Catholic faith in this forum, but I do agree that Western Christians in general tend to get caught up in the narrow-minded, exoteric practices of their faith and don't often try to find the transcendent, unifying truth. I think that "Enlightened" Roman Catholicism is almost like the best religion, but my vision of the Catholic faith is almost like heresy in modern-day terms (perhaps it would have been more acceptable back in the pre-modern world). Christian esoterism/mysticism does exist though and I think it's super interesting.

[zwimmy]

"You can be a nazi but you don't have to be :^)"

wow sounds great

[basketweaver]

Proper Traditionalism really isn't that Nazi at all though. It's just elitist in the literal sense: Buddhas, saints, gurus, and wise scholars (i.e. members of the spiritual elite) have greater access to the secrets of the world and are viewed with more respect. In contrast, bourgeois philistines are more like children who need to learn more about themselves and the world before becoming mature individuals.

There's emphasis on ancestry in Traditionalism/esoterism in the sense that, if your family, friends, or community have connections to the spiritual elite, it's easier for those teachings to pass onto you (for example, it probably would be easier for a Tibetan Buddhist monk to become enlightened than it would be for an American college student), but even a deluded manchild can become enlightened as long as they're open and self-aware.

Neo-Nazis who happen to piggyback on Traditionalism just say that spiritual elite = racial elite, but there's no real reason (in my opinion) for race to correlate with spiritual intelligence in the Nazi-eugenics sense.

[Bamyasi]

So you don't distinguish between eastern and western Esotericism? I guess that's inherent in Traditionalism but it's one of many aspects I'd like to learn more about.

Any entry-level texts you'd recommend?

"You can be a nazi but you don't have to be :^)"

Wouldn't this describe literally any school of thought ever conceived? It's just real life. There are radical and Fascistic ideologues everywhere (including the modern Social Justice movement). That doesn't mean all discourse should end whenever the word is invoked.

Speaking of Enlightenment, what do you think of U. G. basket? I know I'm always the first to bring up contrarian perspectives but I'm curious as to how a Traditionalist/Esotericist would respond to him (or his wikipedia page because he's dead).

[basketweaver]

So you don't distinguish between eastern and western Esotericism? I guess that's inherent in Traditionalism but it's one of many aspects I'd like to learn more about.

Yeah, I don't really distinguish between them. A lot of the Western scholars of esoterism draw influence from Sufism, Buddhism, or Indian philosophy, all of which are eastern in origin anyways. Actually, I'm not sure if I've ever heard of any Western scholar who draws influence SOLELY from Western esoteric sources like Christian or Greek mysticism, but they probably exist.

Any entry-level texts you'd recommend?

Julius Evola's Ride the Tiger is a classic, but tbh it's pretty annoying to read. I think the Bhagavad Gita is the best and most entry-level religious text for this (get E. Easwaran's translation, it's great!). Also, since you've already read Hermann Hesse's works, a lot of the concepts will be familiar to you. Also, Rene Guenon is the quintessential Traditionalist writer, but I'm bad and haven't finished reading him.

Basically, any book titles that say something like "The modern world sucks" or "revolt against modernity" will be Traditionalist in nature. Also, Alasdair MacIntyre is kind of quasi-Traditionalist.

Speaking of Enlightenment, what do you think of U. G. basket? I know I'm always the first to bring up contrarian perspectives but I'm curious as to how a Traditionalist/Esotericist would respond to him (or his wikipedia page because he's dead).

I think that U.G.'s contrarianism is actually totally compatible with esoterism. There's a movement in Buddhism to fight against spiritual materialism, which is basically a holier-than-thou mentality which a lot of modern day Buddhist hippies have. Even the most "enlightened" initiates sometimes have this problem, where you're always comparing yourself to others and trying to appear smart and detached in your practice. U.G.'s response, that "there is nothing to understand", is basically the classic esoteric cop-out answer, that "these guys have [concept] wrong because they're dumb, but I have [the same concept] right because I'm smart."

That's why I think esoterism is interesting because you don't just judge the ideas, but you judge the person who has the idea too. It's like, ad hominem attacks are actually welcomed. If you're a dumb guy who really doesn't know anything and you HAPPENED to preach the correct answer, people will still criticize you for not really understanding your own words.

[michaell]

how the fuck could anyone say nazism is traditionalist in any way

they repudiated christianity

plus uh

there was no such thing as nationalism in the past - it was all conceived by some dumb fucks in maybe the XIXth century, before there were no uh

FRENCH people

there were just, subjects of the..king of france! thats how it worked

and really gay and stupid ideologies like socialism were conceived in the XIXth century as well

and nazism is national socialism, precisly speaking from an economic point of view, corporationism

[Gladius]

how the fuck could anyone say nazism is traditionalist in any way

ditto "inward focus" because this does not concern spiritual enlightenment but pleasure seeking and self interest

[Bamyasi]

Yeah, I don't really distinguish between them. A lot of the Western scholars of esoterism draw influence from Sufism, Buddhism, or Indian philosophy, all of which are eastern in origin anyways. Actually, I'm not sure if I've ever heard of any Western scholar who draws influence SOLELY from Western esoteric sources like Christian or Greek mysticism, but they probably exist.

Oh yeah but I meant like considering Western esotericism that developed during or pre-Middle Ages, before weeaboos like Marco Polo, separately from Eastern schools. Traditionalism would seem to conflate them, which I find interesting. So really there's no meaningful distinction between academic study of estoericism and esotericism proper? That's interesting. I always like when scholars don't pretend the thing they're studying exists in a vacuum.

Julius Evola's Ride the Tiger is a classic, but tbh it's pretty annoying to read. I think the Bhagavad Gita is the best and most entry-level religious text for this (get E. Easwaran's translation, it's great!). Also, since you've already read Hermann Hesse's works, a lot of the concepts will be familiar to you. Also, Rene Guenon is the quintessential Traditionalist writer, but I'm bad and haven't finished reading him.

Basically, any book titles that say something like "The modern world sucks" or "revolt against modernity" will be Traditionalist in nature. Also, Alasdair MacIntyre is kind of quasi-Traditionalist.

I will download all of these. Thanks.

I think that U.G.'s contrarianism is actually totally compatible with esoterism. There's a movement in Buddhism to fight against spiritual materialism, which is basically a holier-than-thou mentality which a lot of modern day Buddhist hippies have. Even the most "enlightened" initiates sometimes have this problem, where you're always comparing yourself to others and trying to appear smart and detached in your practice. U.G.'s response, that "there is nothing to understand", is basically the classic esoteric cop-out answer, that "these guys have [concept] wrong because they're dumb, but I have [the same concept] right because I'm smart."

That's why I think esoterism is interesting because you don't just judge the ideas, but you judge the person who has the idea too. It's like, ad hominem attacks are actually welcomed. If you're a dumb guy who really doesn't know anything and you HAPPENED to preach the correct answer, people will still criticize you for not really understanding your own words.

That makes sense. From what I know about U. G, he mostly talked to disillusioned westerners who were turning to Eastern wisdom after becoming bored with Protestantism or some other lame shit. It makes sense that his apparent Nihilism would be more polemic in nature, rather than an innate lack of belief. Am I understanding you correctly?

how the fuck could anyone say nazism is traditionalist in any way

they repudiated christianity

Yes but from a North American "what the fuck even is my culture" liberal perspective, a will to preserve any European heritage is basically synonymous with Nazism. I'm not saying it's correct, it's just how people think. Nazism and Communism were always considered a more internal threat here (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both Red Scares) rather than an external imposition (1984, the invasion of Poland), because there was always at least a fairly large body of water separating us from the Third Reich.

Of course it's stupid but Americans are stupid.

[SrsSam77]

I want to like esoterism but the belief that there are things in this world that can't be explained seems like a bit of a copout. If you told someone about string theory 300 or even 100 years ago, you'd be committed to bedlam. Humanities discoveries and mental faculties are growing at an exponential rate and why some may say that science doesn't offer a spiritual answer, it does offer a hell of a lot better answer than a guy living in a cave eating moss can give.

[zwimmy]

I'm really trying to understand this whole concept but it just seems rather vague. What I'm getting so far is "The modern world is bad, also read about these old religions." What parts of the modern world are bad? What does this whole "return to tradition" thing actually imply?

[Gladius]

Of course it's stupid but Americans are stupid.

they are now thanks to commercialism diversity and scaling up beyond the optimum human livable means

[Bamyasi]

Hence Traditionalism I guess.

I've plugged it before but this BBC documentary series really helped me understand America better than almost anything else. You'd probably like it Gladius, assuming you haven't seen it.

[basketweaver]

Oh yeah but I meant like considering Western esotericism that developed during or pre-Middle Ages, before weeaboos like Marco Polo, separately from Eastern schools. Traditionalism would seem to conflate them, which I find interesting. So really there's no meaningful distinction between academic study of estoericism and esotericism proper? That's interesting. I always like when scholars don't pretend the thing they're studying exists in a vacuum.

I can't speak with too much authority about this particular aspect of the philosophy, but I would guess that pre-modern Western esoterism might have been less perennial and less accommodating of other religions than modern esoterism. The pre-modern Western esoterics wouldn't have been as exposed to the inner traditions and holy books of other religions, as the 19th century esoterics were, and were probably more dogmatic about their particular customs.

That makes sense. From what I know about U. G, he mostly talked to disillusioned westerners who were turning to Eastern wisdom after becoming bored with Protestantism or some other lame shit. It makes sense that his apparent Nihilism would be more polemic in nature, rather than an innate lack of belief. Am I understanding you correctly?

Yeah, I think that's it. U.G.'s position sounds like a natural response to westerners superficially picking up eastern religions without really understanding them.

I want to like esoterism but the belief that there are things in this world that can't be explained seems like a bit of a copout. If you told someone about string theory 300 or even 100 years ago, you'd be committed to bedlam. Humanities discoveries and mental faculties are growing at an exponential rate and why some may say that science doesn't offer a spiritual answer, it does offer a hell of a lot better answer than a guy living in a cave eating moss can give.

I think, whether or not its a cop-out, it's just true that there are things which defy explanation, and that's a flaw of our universe, not of esoterism. I guess it sounds nitpicky, but questions like "How do you know this isn't a dream right now?" and "On what basis do you accept the rules of logic?" show the limitations of purely rational reasoning. See my answer to zwim:

I'm really trying to understand this whole concept but it just seems rather vague. What I'm getting so far is "The modern world is bad, also read about these old religions." What parts of the modern world are bad? What does this whole "return to tradition" thing actually imply?

One way that someone could think that the modern world is bad is just by evaluating, like an Amazon reviewer, the modern moral experience. There is a lot of chaos, inconsistency, and confusion in today's moral world. Many important questions have answers which are shallow and ultimately unsatisfying. At the risk of repeating myself, questions like: "Is this a dream?", "Does the self exist?", "What's the purpose of life?", "Where do good and evil come from?", and "How can we explain the subjective experience of consciousness?" have very hollow answers in a modern, secular framework. Some people believe that the modern position has become so shallow and unsatisfactory as to be untenable, demanding a more robust replacement. These people might move on to Traditionalism, which is one of these robust replacement solutions.

Human existence has fewer existential holes in Traditionalism. A "return to tradition" means acknowledging that sacredness, intuitive truth, and transcendent morality play a fundamental role in human existence (even though we can't know for certain whether they are real). Tradition is like an infrastructure which supports the transmission of Existentially-Satisfying Truth; without it, everything just falls apart.

Note that this is distinct from stuff like people who believe in God because they just "feel like" that's how everything should be. When I talk about the "unsatisfactory answers" of modern philosophy, I mean that when you keep asking why? successively to the modern philosopher's answers for some of the big questions, you eventually reach a foundation which is hollow and unsturdy. For example, a modern philosopher might say that good and evil come from people's respect for human rights. But where do human rights come from? Maybe the modern answer is that human rights are something intrinsically inside every human being. But who put those human rights there? Why do they have to "intrinsically" exist instead of not being there at all? Eventually, you just reach a stopping point. Under the modern view, you end up with a sort of squishy uncertain answer which reeks of being overly influenced by the "common sense" of the 21st century (and remember, there's no reason to trust "common sense" understandings of human existence). In contrast, under the Traditional view, you get a more robust answer, i.e., that a transcendent, universal moral plane accounts for good and evil.

It's kind of like comparing the strength of two different pairs of glasses. When you put on a superior pair of glasses, you can "just tell" that they're better. Even if you've only been wearing one bad pair of glasses your entire life, you might still have a sense that this is not what the world should look like. You might even have a memory of what the world looked like before your vision changed for the worse. There's no other logic there. If putting on the glasses of Traditionalism makes the world more morally consistent and clear, then you might want to keep those glasses on indefinitely.

[Bamyasi]

I haven't read PR but I loved Illuminatus. It has the best opening line of any book ever screw you Ishmael.

Also basket you're making a whole lot of sense ITT. Thanks again.

[Gladius]

I've plugged it before but this BBC documentary series really helped me understand America better than almost anything else. You'd probably like it Gladius, assuming you haven't seen it.

looks like a good watch thank u

[crackers]

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Social_policies_(Civ5) Hello, I advise you look at the Tradition policy, have a nice day.

Have a nice day.

[zwimmy]

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Social_policies_(Civ5) Hello, I advise you look at the Tradition policy, have a nice day.

Have a nice day.

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Social_policies_(Civ5)#Aesthetics

[basketweaver]

Also, please don't be afraid of just posting general comments, questions, or links to other concepts during this general discussion.

I was thinking about some of the stuff I wrote to Zwimmy yesterday, esp. stuff about why certain frameworks might seem more robust than others, and I realized something about virtue ethics, one of my favorite ethical philosophies.

Virtue ethics basically says that the concepts of right or wrong are naturally married to our ideas of the ultimate good life. In order to understand what makes an action good, we need to understand what makes a good person, first. This is different from Kantian Deontology, where action is married to rational rules exclusively, or Utilitarianism, where action is married to external consequences. Virtue ethics is one of the few ethical branches that focuses on the development of your individual character.

The biggest criticism of virtue ethics is that it's just too vague, or too wishy-washy, to be a truly objective and true philosophy. From Wikipedia: "Some criticize the theory in relation to the difficulty involved with establishing the nature of the virtues. Different people, cultures and societies often have different opinions on what constitutes a virtue."

Aristotle, despite having a huge hard-on for the critical use of reason, and despite being a practically-minded person, resolved this contradiction by just waving his hands in the air and saying that ethics is not a science which can be studied using reason alone. Ethics is like carpentry; you need to use reason and mathematics sometimes, but other times, you just need to get your hands dirty and trust your gut. Aristotle basically argued that having good character also means having a good intuition and gut-feeling, not just following rules like a mathematician. One limitation of Aristotle's work is that he doesn't actively advocate deep, inner learning in order to gain some of these good intuitions -- but I think that he almost certainly would have supported it (with minor caveats) if someone had proposed it.

So it's kind of funny. Esoterism seems to be pretty compatible with Aristotelianism; you could build an "ethical framework engine" where the internals are based off esoterism, the middle layer is built off Aristotelianism, and the last layer is built off any external rules-system of your choice (like human rights). I've never really thought about this aspect of virtue ethics too hard until you guys asked your questions.