Arya

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Greetings. I come from Aryez and I bring the religion of Arya here.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

The Philosophy of Arya:

Ontology: All things can be divided into three categories: matter-being, being, and spiritual being. Being represents time and space which are found everywhere and are eternal and uncreated. Matter being is everything found in the Universes, primarily matter but also anti-matter and so on. Spiritual being is non-material and permeates the Universe. Every bit of matter has corresponding spiritual material in it and the more complex the matter, the more complex the spiritual being.

Cosmology: Time and Space are uncreated, eternal, and infinite. Matter and spiritual being are also uncreated and eternal and are collectively infinite but individually finite. Within the never ending space and time countless universes (matter and energy) exist and come into being or cease to exist now and then. Our current universe did begin for the totality of all universes never began.

Theology: The universe is filled with countless spirits and beings, some of which may be considered gods as their power is greater than those of humans. However a personification of the summation of spiritual material is a super conscious being which guides the cycles of universes and law of the universe along. He may also help the process of evolution. However the ultimately reality is the impersonal summation of all, infinite and eternal, and self-existing. This reality is by nature the driving force of the entire process and is cosmic energy.

Epistemology:
1. Empirical Evidence (experience, experiment) [invalid until proven right]
2. Logic (logical derivation)
3. Intuition [valid until proven wrong]
4. Inference
5. Trustworthy authority, revelation (if revelation does not contradict empirical evidence, logic, etc.)

Ethics: Arya believes that there is a law of goodness, beauty, and truth built into the Universe and that this law is eternal and unchanging. This is correspondent to physical and natural laws such as the law of gravity. However the law manifests itself differently in various cultures and times due to differences among these different cultures and times.

Humanity’ Place in the Universe and Ideas of Soul and Afterlife: Human beings, having evolved into complex organisms correspondingly contain complex spiritual evolution. The spiritual aspect of each human being is known to each individual as his or own soul. The soul is distinct from the body, though ultimately both are aspects of the Universal Oneness. The soul and mind are one and the same as spiritual existence is pure consciousness. After death, the spiritual aspect of each human being, the soul, continues to grow. Like a seed which stays in the soil before breaking free from the soil as a plant which continues to grow, human souls use the body like a seed uses the soil. The human soul, the consciousness therefore exists “floating” around the world and universe forever in a sea of consciousness.

Within this framework, specific ethics/morals, mythology, and institutions can be worked out. Goodness and alignment with the natural law are considered desirable. Man's ultimate goal in life is to increase his consciousness and knowledge as this brings him closer to becoming "one" with reality, and by doing do enters into a state of bliss. Reality itself is objective and can be properly determined. However due to other factors, it may often only be made known to man through subjective methods. Political and social systems are unrelated to the ultimate reality; however as there is a clear ethic built into the Universe, it is presumed that well-constructed systems take into account this eternal ethic to the best of their ability. However, no particular system of government is proscribed.

Although Arya does hold to ideas of Universalism, it also holds that in the specific cultural context of Aryez, there ought to be certain particular rituals and ethics as well as an organized religious institution. Thus, Arya's belief that rules and practices are manifested through the lens of a particular time and culture is well established in the belief and practice of Arya in Aryez. There are no apologies for the particulars of Arya as practiced in Aryez.

Later, this formulation of Arya came to be known as Orthodox Arya in order to differentiate it from Neo-Arya which shared most of the same spiritual and ethical assumptions but saw theology and ontology differently. The ancient Aryezi religion of Aralan (based off of the scripture "The Marfat" vanished from Aryez a long time ago, with some of its doctrines being absorbed into Arya.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Aryaists worship in huge aesthetically pleasing buildings which serve both as community centers and places of collective worship and contemplation. The following is the Hall of the Gods in the Aryezi capital, Aryezadel.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

The other formulation of Arya, aside from Orthodox Arya is Neo-Arya.

Here are its views:

Neo-Arya reconciles the different conceptions of divinity by proposing the formula, One God, Three Parts, Nine Divisions will be known as the Novemty or Nine-ness.

Therefore, the conception is that there is one divine reality, which is the source and definition of all being. That one being is God.

God exists in three parts (relationship to the Christian trinity is coincidental as is its relationship to the Hindu trinity):

1. Personification ("personal God")
2. Incarnate
3. Force

Each of these 3 parts is further divided into 3 parts, thus giving us 9 divisions.

Personification:
1. God personified (fully God)
2. demigods (partially god) <-- partial in the sense that they by themselves are not fully god but have a spark of god within them
3. spirits, ghosts, etc. (partially god)

Incarnate:
1. Incarnate (fully God)
2. Sages and Saints (partially)
3. Philosophers, Prophets (partially)

Force:
1. The Force, Brahman (fully God)
2. Atman/Soul/"Holy Ghost" (partially god)
3. Principle, Natural Law, the Laws of Science, the Forms of Goodness, Truth, and Justice (partially god), physical matter proceeds forth from the Principle

Together, these nine aspects form a nine-ety that make up one god.

Although Neo-Arya's ontology and theology are different from Orthodox Arya, there are no major disagreements on other points such as the goal of human life, the nature of the soul and the afterlife, and ethical concerns.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

We have established the Temple of Truth in Shireroth. All are welcome to come and worship, inquire about Arya, or join the faith.

Interior of the Temple:

Literature

The essence of Arya can be captured by poetry written by believers. The following is a blog which contains examples.

http://aryeztur.wordpress.com/

[Malliki Tosha]

We are Cedrists usually. At least I am.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I love your Temple of Truth. I used to have that poster on my wall back when I was in college...*digs through some old photos*...here we go!. And that blue circular building is just stunning.

The philosophy, not so much.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Verily, I have that poster too. I think its popular among college students.

Arya is a true philosophy that outlines a path towards truth and salvation. Perhaps it may seem too deep for the casual tastes of many. After all, it was created to be a real philosophy that can explain this universe. It is up to you to accept or not accept Arya. There are other ways to the light after all.

[Santelran Rottsaa]

*recognizes a lot of the philosophy from his eastern philosophy class*

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Arya is a true philosophy that outlines a path towards truth and salvation. Perhaps it may seem too deep for the casual tastes of many. After all, it was created to be a real philosophy that can explain this universe. It is up to you to accept or not accept Arya. There are other ways to the light after all.

I...don't think it's that simple. I've already told you in Aryez that although I really admire the work you've put into Arya and the way you've presented it, I disagree with the philosophy behind it. Not in a "there are many paths to truth, and this is not mine" sort of way, but a "this philosophy is not going to be very good at creating good people and good societies" sort of way. For example, take the passage you recently quoted in your forum in Antica.

"The age of chivalry is gone. -- That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory...is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold a generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, achieved defensive nations, the nurse of the manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. . . ."

If I understand Arya right, this sort of thinking is at the very center of it; a Nietzschean desire to return life to a noble, heroic warrior tradition. I like the noble heroic warrior tradition in the sense that I like to read about it and imagine it and such, but I think as a guide to thought or action it's a really, really bad idea.

By coincidence, I happen to have an essay I wrote a few months ago for something else that might as well be a reply to why I think that quote has it exactly wrong. Since I know you're intellectually curious and interested in discussing this kind of thing, I hope you won't be too offended if I post it here as my reply to why this sort of thing is wrong-headed.

Everyone loves heroes. At the dawn of recorded history we talked about Gilgamesh and Odysseus, and on message boards today we talk about Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker. Many great scholars have traced underlying common themes in the stories of heroes, even theorized that there is only one hero with a thousand faces, whose exploits may change but whose animating spirit remains constant.

Then there are bureaucrats, one of the least beloved groups around. Elie Wiesel once said that the opposite of love was not hate but indifference; our indifference to bureaucrats is staggering and monumental. I've talked to some bureaucrats, and they universally complain that saying "I work as an bureaucrat" is a very bad way to get invited to parties. Something seems sad and dehumanizing about the work, even though everyone agrees that it is the bureaucrats and their equally unloved cousins the accountants and engineers and clerks who keep modern society running.

To me, these two figures correspond to two different modes of thinking about the world. The heroic mode of thinking glories in the intuitive but defective native architecture of the human brain. The bureaucrat mode ignores the native architecture and optimizes for efficiency.

For the hero, the world is full of clear or reasonably clear dichotomies. These people here are the good guys, these people here are the villains. You can tell which group is which because the good guys have flowing golden hair and use the word "peace" a lot, whereas the bad guys dress in black and talk with German accents.

For the hero, there are no moral dilemmas. Things like life, peace, nature, freedom, family, and loyalty are always good. Things like war, poverty, and rebellion are always bad. If it looks for a second like the hero might have to compromise his values and accept something bad in order to get something good, it always turns out to be one of the villain's tricks, which the hero discovers and thwarts at the last moment.

If something is wrong, the hero knows the problem is caused by a group of evil people doing evil things. He must find them and stop them, using his courage, his dedication, and his purity of heart. If pressed, he is permitted to use enough cleverness to climb into a secret fortress through the sewers, but no more.

If it is absolutely impossible to blame the problem on a group of evil people, it is marginally acceptable to blame it on a large and obvious natural catastrophe, such as a plague or famine. The hero may solve it through intelligence, but only by having a single eureka insight, preferably in a dream.

The hero is permitted to work with a small group of other people, which he will naturally lead on account of his good looks, clear moral compass, and possible secret identity as the prince of the realm who was abandoned at birth. If anyone questions the hero's right to lead, he is probably a spy for the villains. Any other form of cooperation with others would just be holding the hero back. The whole reason he's a hero is that he has the insight and initiative to strike out on his own and not be held back by existing institutions!

The hero always has the odds stacked against him, but he always dismisses this with a casual one-liner like "Just means we have more targets!" Despite the poor odds, he refuses to violate even the tinest precept of his moral intuition, even when that refusal spells almost certain defeat and the death of millions. It doesn't matter; this is just his way of proving his heroism, and he always comes out on top in the end by some staggering coincidence.

Everything the hero does is always visible and obvious. When he has a hardship, it is a hardship like crossing the Desert of Burning Ash, where each step brings him physical pain. When he takes action, it is some sort of flashy impressive action, whether it be sword-fighting, shooting magic fire from his fingertips, or bringing tears to everyone's eyes with a heart-breakingly eloquent speech. Whenever the hero makes a misstep, it is always obvious in the form of screams and dead bodies, and whenever the hero succeeds, there are always ticker-tape parades and galas and a thousand newly freed children coming to thank him.

The hero always has a destiny. He always knows that his hardships have some very specific purpose, whether it is slaying the Dark Lord, regaining the throne, or saving the life of his family. The rightness of that destiny is never in question, and if anyone questions it, they later turn out to be a spy for the villain. When the hero achieves this destiny, everything in the world becomes right again.

I use the language of fantasy here because in some sense it is mythologically pure, but practically every genre enjoys the same conventions:

The courtroom drama, where the new starry-eyed but firmly moral prosecutor manages by pluck and eloquence to expose the violent mob boss and his team of corrupt defense attorneys, all while holding off his superiors' cowardly attempts to get him to drop the case for political reasons.

The hospital show, where a lone doctor using her not-by-the-book medical knowledge cures the patient right in the nick of time, using a procedure everyone else told her was too risky.

The true crime drama, where one street-smart cop manages to catch a deadly criminal by complete imperviousness to fear.

The hallmarks of the heroic worldview are one and the same as the biases we have been trying to eliminate. The hero is always attractive, or, if homely, is homely in an attractive way and is played in the movie by a good-looking actor. His enemies are always innately evil. When choosing one life against the world, the hero always chooses one life, because to do otherwise would compromise his principles. His subjective views of goodness and badness always end up being right, and he only makes mistakes when he goes against his intuition. He has a strong sense of right and wrong separate from any context or consequences. No matter how low other people say the odds are, as long as there is the tinest hope of success he will still hold out. He never loses hope. Most of all, he never changes his mind about the really important things, because that's what the villains want him to do.

In other words, he behaves exactly the way we are always told to act in books, and exactly the opposite of the way that the best philosophers, statisticians, scientists, and humanitarians have determined is actually, you know, going to work.

And then there are the bureaucrats.

Bureaucrats are also involved in fighting evil, in a way. The people in the Department of Motor Vehicles have a mandate to prevent car accidents. This is a worthy mandate; worthier in some ways than that of the hero. Even the worst villains rarely kill more than a few thousand people, but deaths from car accidents easily reach the tens of thousands each year.

The bureaucrat fastidiously refuses to assign her problems a moral dimension or attribute them to specific evil people. If there are too many car accidents, she'll wonder if the roads might be poorly built, not if the drivers are evil. Even if she later concludes that it is the fault of drunk drivers, she will waste no time condemning the drunks' villainousness; she's more likely to wonder if policies like making bars close earlier or starting an anti-alcohol campaign would cut down on fatalities.

The bureaucrat knows every possible solution is a trade-off. She could reduce fatalities by lowering the speed limit, but that would risk annoying people and wasting their time. She could increase the penalties for drunk driving, but then she would need to allocate more funds to the prison system which might otherwise be used for road maintenance.

The bureaucrat never trusts her own intuition. If there's not a controlled study by an unbiased research institution, then stop wasting her time. Statements like "We need to widen the roads" are useless until she sees statistics on how many accidents happen on wide roads versus narrower roads; even then, she is likely to want to know whether the difference is significant enough to justify the cost of that much more pavement. Without these, your outrage about your cousin Cindy who broke her arm on a narrow road means nothing to her.

The bureaucrat's most important virtue is her ability to make good decisions. This does not require courage, purity of heart, or dedication. It mostly requires the ability to perform imposing statistical analyses and read lots of pages of heavily footnoted material without proper paragraph breaks. It is no fun for anyone including her, and it does not generate strong emotion or excitement in anyone, even when the lives of ten thousand hang on the line.

The bureaucrat always works with other people in a complicated system intended to leave little space for personal idiosyncrasies. Since everyone has different views about how the roads should be run, she will often subordinate her deeply held beliefs to other people for the good of the group, or follow orders she believes to be personally flawed. As much as she might like to do everything herself, she knows that everyone else also wants to be dictator, and that a world where everyone does everything on their own by their own rules is a world where nothing gets done.

The bureaucrat's successes and failures pass unknown both to herself and to the lives she saves or dooms. If her new road-widening initiative saves three thousand lives, it is entirely possible she will never know because of statistical noise in the accident rate. If her road-widening initiative was a stupid waste of money, she will never have to confront any of the taxpayers whose livelihood she stole. Perhaps she will save the lives of more people than the greatest of the medieval paladins, but be passed over for a promotion because the most salient point her boss could remember about her was that she came in ten minutes late once and missed half of a staff meeting. Maybe of the lives she unknowingly saved, she will meet only one, and that one will be calling her a leech of taxpayer money who can't get a real job because she refuses to renew his license.

The bureaucrat has no destiny. She's not moving towards any particular happy ending. One day the accident rate goes down because of her good work, and a dozen human lives are saved from extinction. The next, some idiot politician makes a stupid campaign promise that destroys the transportation network, and it goes back up again. Such is life.

There is nothing romantic about the bureaucrat. There is nothing romantic about the life of the average scientist who diligently gathers data over decades instead of having one eureka moment, or the average businessman who gradually but successfully builds up a store that employs dozens, or the average economist trying to make the market work more effectively.

What I consider the fundamental problem with human civilization is: the average person vastly prefers the hero mode of big, flashy, narcissistic actions and uses it almost exclusively, but the bureaucrat mode is the one that you can build a working civilization with.

The hero mode is just as brilliantly adapted to the puzzles we would have encountered in a 20,000 BC African savannah as our taste buds are adapted to the diet we would have encountered there. When you live in small bands ruled by a couple of people, and your main problems are killing large animals and fighting off rivals, the hero mode works great. Even if you're a Bronze Age king, trying to massacre some Hittites while getting the peasants to worship you as a god, hero mode is still pretty good. But when you're trying to figure out whether or not to nationalize health care, it works about as well as a Paleolithic palate in a donut shop.

The bureaucrat mode is a product not of evolution but of human genius. It is the end result of our studies into philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, and a whole lot of trial and error, all turned to the goal of finding out what works for complex problems. If we want to deal with modern problems, we have no choice but to use it.

But we don't have to like it. We are not self-improving AIs, to rewrite our source code to include the newly developed superior version. At best, we are emulators: a computer with a native architecture in hero mode, imperfectly emulating a machine running in bureaucrat mode. Most emulators don't work very well, and we are no exception. We come here to learn how to better emulate bureaucrat mode, all while leaving the heroic core of the machine basically untouched. I think we've all had the experience where we hear some political proposal, form a gut level reaction to it, remember all those hours reading logic and philosophy, sigh, and get down to the business of figuring out what our rational reaction is going to be.

We're not very good at running bureaucrat mode, and we're never going to like it as much as charging out at the nearest scary-looking person while waving a sword. But we owe it to the thousands of people whose lives it can improve to try. In the end, that's the real heroism.

This essay doesn't begin to express my true philosophy - which involves successfully bureaucratically optimizing the happiness of a population of people who think in and who enjoy thinking in hero mode - but I think it's a necessary counterbalance to Burke's "SCREW BUREAUCRATS LET'S ALL RUN OFF AND PRETEND WE'RE KNIGHTS" style of thinking.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Rottsaa, there are major eastern influences in Arya, especially metaphysical ones. However, there are substantial differences. Unlike Eastern religions, Arya does not advocate a meditative life. In fact, an active, family life is considered best. Furthermore, unlike Eastern religions, Arya does not differentiate between the mind and soul (the soul must free itself both from the mind/intellect and body in Hinduism) or deny the existence of a god (as in Buddhism). Arya also emphatically rejects reincarnation and believes that a moral code is an important part of religion and without doing good deeds, one cannot hope to reach a higher state. Bad deeds not only include evil deeds by non-good deeds such as withdrawing from society

"this philosophy is not going to be very good at creating good people and good societies"

The philosophy is highly metaphysical. However, that is why I called this the "Philosophy of Arya." I do believe that the ethics of Arya, largely drawn from rational, secular, and humanist wisdom, Confucianism, and Islam-Christianity DO help make people better and societies better. As for the proper construction of a society, that's political theory more than religion. I am a political science major and I assure you, I am working on that problem.

I also find you incorrect in characterizing Arya as Nietzschian although you are correct it is the goal to return society to a heroic tradition based on the classics and romances of the past. "To follow the path of the ancients" is a common phrase in Aryez. Aryez is not Nietzschian because it is not nihilistic nor does it disparage weakness or "soft values." Nietzsche's rejection of weakness and his characterization of Christianity as a religion of death are not acceptable to Arya, which sees religions as light. It is part of the model of chivalry to protect the weak, glorify those who have faith and are at the bottom of society. Arya believes in compassion. Nietzsche shares this desire, but he is a product of his times- an age of doubt and moral relativity. Like Burke, Arya believes in preserving the good from the past but innovating away from the bad. Further, I recognize that the heroic noble tradition is an ideal- probably in most cases, just an ideal. Most people did not live in such a manner. However, I deem it important to have such an ideal accepted within society, so as to set a standard and a model of perfection and emulation- so that people have a goal of good living to reach towards. Tolkien was a great modern proponent of this noble idea. Nonetheless, unfortunately our age is saturated with relativism and lacks such noble ideals as models. I do not actually believe in much of the reality of such events or ideals- everything from Buddha to Christ and medieval knights and Samurai have become the stuff of legend but who knows what life was actually like in those gritty times. But that's what matters, the ideal. Perhaps I now sound a bit Nietzchian or Machiavellian by arguing that the ideal is more important than reality, and that the ideal might be propagandized for social value regardless of its truth. Perhaps.

The hero mode is just as brilliantly adapted to the puzzles we would have encountered in a 20,000 BC African savannah as our taste buds are adapted to the diet we would have encountered there. When you live in small bands ruled by a couple of people, and your main problems are killing large animals and fighting off rivals, the hero mode works great. Even if you're a Bronze Age king, trying to massacre some Hittites while getting the peasants to worship you as a god, hero mode is still pretty good. But when you're trying to figure out whether or not to nationalize health care, it works about as well as a Paleolithic palate in a donut shop.

Firstly, I will not deny that you are correct in the gist of this. Nonetheless, in order to get away from the daily stresses and grinding of life, people DO need heros. They need not be real. But the ideal still matters. That is why people turn to fantasy books in large numbers, for example. Fantasy is a genre that thrives on man's need for a hero. Secondly, I do not deny what you are saying about society. My argument is that our society might have evolved in the wrong direction. Maybe our current society needs to be modified or dismantled or in some way turned around/back because the older models are more inherently noble. Our modern physical/material advances are good, it is good that we do not mistreat people as in the past, but much of society's attitudes towards itself, wealth, the meaning of life, family, etc. is essentially wrong. I will not deny that I accept the idea of violent revolution to achieve my general goals. So did Communism. So does Islamic militancy.

What you say about the bureaucrat makes sense. I am not against bureaucrats. Every complex society needs them. But it would be a bad world to live in when people cannot or do not also think in terms of good and evil. right or wrong. Bureaucrats can be trained in to think in terms of goodness (Confucianism) but do they really need to be? The question we must ask ourselves is this: what sort of sick society have we created where the entire class that manages society does not think in such terms. However, the nature of bureaucracy prevents this. Then all the best to have a limited bureaucracy and one filled with ones trained in virtue as well as practical things.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Again, I would like to clarify that I do not image there was ever a time we were all noble knights and damsels or advocate a society like that. I am fully aware that in ancient times, medieval times, early modern times, in all of the higher societies, the majority of people liked a common life and their popular culture did not exactly emphasize a warrior spirit. The common culture of those times as well as these times is at times vulgar and coarse, but also interesting, creative, and entertaining. My argument is that the fundamental difference between those times and the present time is that all those people had the ideal and aspiration that they could improve themselves ethically and rise up. I believe that reading Alan Bloom's book "The Closing of the American Mind" will more clearly explain my beliefs on this matter.

I will not deny often I am tempted to agree fully with you and scrap my philosophies altogether. It is not perfect and it does risk overidealization. It is still a work in progress and my views evolve. This is obvious. For example, the previous religion I created, Aralan is dead, in the dustbin of history.

[vasroe]

Nice pictures, Aryeztur. The temple scenes look heavenly and spiritual.

[Harvey Steffke]

AryezturMejorkhor, you may be interested to know that Scott and I debated his essay in the #micronations chat room (available from the "Chat" link button up at the top of the screen) with me largely taking the same stance as you and Scott taking the stance of a robot who's heart has turned to stone. You should drop in the chat some time and join in the fray.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Lord Steffke, it is good to know that I am not the only one who thinks like this. It is unfortunate Scott thinks in such a way.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

The Temple of Truth maintains a Shrine in the Multitemple. However the large independent temple is now located in the city of Mejor.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

AryezturMejorkhor, you may be interested to know that Scott and I debated his essay in the #micronations chat room (available from the "Chat" link button up at the top of the screen) with me largely taking the same stance as you and Scott taking the stance of a robot who's heart has turned to stone. You should drop in the chat some time and join in the fray.

Scott's an incipient Robespierre these days

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I also find you incorrect in characterizing Arya as Nietzschian although you are correct it is the goal to return society to a heroic tradition based on the classics and romances of the past. "To follow the path of the ancients" is a common phrase in Aryez. Aryez is not Nietzschian because it is not nihilistic nor does it disparage weakness or "soft values."

This is a bit irrelevant to the discussion, but Nietzsche wasn't nihilist - in fact, I think of his philosophy as partly a reaction against and alternative to nihilism, and although he was sorta relativist I think it was in a very different way from today's relativists and he wouldn't've liked them very much. I accept that Arya's embrace of religious values makes it significantly different. It just struck me as the closest mainstream equivalent. I didn't mean it as an insult - I have a lot of respect for Nietzsche as a fellow Hyperborean.

Further, I recognize that the heroic noble tradition is an ideal- probably in most cases, just an ideal. Most people did not live in such a manner. However, I deem it important to have such an ideal accepted within society, so as to set a standard and a model of perfection and emulation- so that people have a goal of good living to reach towards. Tolkien was a great modern proponent of this noble idea. Nonetheless, unfortunately our age is saturated with relativism and lacks such noble ideals as models. I do not actually believe in much of the reality of such events or ideals- everything from Buddha to Christ and medieval knights and Samurai have become the stuff of legend but who knows what life was actually like in those gritty times. But that's what matters, the ideal. Perhaps I now sound a bit Nietzchian or Machiavellian by arguing that the ideal is more important than reality, and that the ideal might be propagandized for social value regardless of its truth. Perhaps.

I guess it depends how you do it. If you tell the common people that you're spreading myths that are good to live up to, that's nice. If you personally know that your myths are false, but you try to convince the common people that they're true, that's morally sketchy...but of course, that's not my real objection to Arya. My main objection is that I don't like the ideal you're trying to spread at all.

Firstly, I will not deny that you are correct in the gist of this. Nonetheless, in order to get away from the daily stresses and grinding of life, people DO need heros. They need not be real. But the ideal still matters. That is why people turn to fantasy books in large numbers, for example. Fantasy is a genre that thrives on man's need for a hero.

Naturalistic fallacy. I admit that humans have a drive to the heroic ideal. But for me, that drive to the heroic ideal is similar to the sex drive. The sex drive can be a very good thing, like when it leads to happy relationships or procreation or even just free love done right. But in our society, we've gone way beyond that, kindling the sex drive until it's pathological. The result is that we're obsessed with pornography, hookups, adultery, and so on. That humans have a sex drive is not an argument for trying to increase humans' sex drive. Any religion where you go to church on Sunday and get told you need to think about sex more would not be doing society a favor.

Yes, humans have a heroic drive. But that heroic drive is generally pathological in today's society. Think about our political system. The Democrats assume that universal health care is an obvious good that would save millions of lives with no downside, and that Republicans oppose it only because they want to make obscene profits by killing poor people. Republicans assume that universal health care is a Communist plot to destroy American industry, and that the Democrats only support it because they want to choke the last sparks of freedom out of the world. The thought of looking at the numbers, checking out what's happened in other countries that have used universal health care, running a complicated cost-benefit analysis, and coming up with a plan that takes the best parts of both sides doesn't occur to either group. Why not? Because they've been trained from birth to think in heroic mode, and so they assume one political party is heroes in shining armor, and the other is cartoonish villains. And they continue cheering for their side no matter what evidence comes in, because that's what heroes do.

Our society has become so pathologically obsessed with thinking in hero mode that it's become completely incapable of solving basic problems without coming to the brink of civil war. I would suggest trying to train people out of hero mode so they stop being so crazy about stuff.

Which isn't to say let's deny that part of society completely. Tolkien's works are brilliant, and are well worth any tiny push in the direction of unhygienic thought processes they may provide. And since there's already a human drive towards heroism, stuff like Tolkien provides a relatively harmless outlet for that drive.

But for the love of God, don't actually form a religion where you tell people they should be more heroic all the time! That's like telling porn addicts they need to worry more about sex!

I think there are virtues we should be encouraging, and that a religion may be the proper way to encourage those virtues, but that they should specifically be the unheroic virtues - curiosity, willingness to change your mind when you find yourself on the wrong side, thinking everything through carefully before you do it, realizing that you may need to compromise sometimes - exactly the sort of thing that the Knights of the Round Table didn't do, but the sort of people who improve humanity today do.

People will learn about the heroic virtues without some formal religion around to teach them - all they need is to read Harry Potter or turn on the TV once in a while. Again, it's like the sex drive - we can expect people to have a really high level of it whether we teach them or not, so all we need to teach them is to restrain themselves before teenagers start getting pregnant (in the sex drive case), or militants start blowing themselves up (in the heroism case).

What you say about the bureaucrat makes sense. I am not against bureaucrats. Every complex society needs them. But it would be a bad world to live in when people cannot or do not also think in terms of good and evil. right or wrong. Bureaucrats can be trained in to think in terms of goodness (Confucianism) but do they really need to be? The question we must ask ourselves is this: what sort of sick society have we created where the entire class that manages society does not think in such terms. However, the nature of bureaucracy prevents this. Then all the best to have a limited bureaucracy and one filled with ones trained in virtue as well as practical things.

Mayve we have different ideas of the bureaucrats' jobs. I think of bureaucrats as being entirely against doing good and fighting evil. Take, again, the bureaucrat in the DMV. Her job is to prevent deaths by car accidents. This is fighting evil, just as someone who duels the Dark Lord Morgoth is fighting evil. Evil is whatever hurts human beings. Problems like Morgoth, cartoon villains with funny mustaches and Russian accents, and dark wizards account for only the tiniest percentage of the evil in the world. Problems like road traffic accidents, diseases, and poverty make up the rest. People like bureaucrats, doctors, and administrators of charity are doing good in the truest sense of the world, even though they don't run anyone through with swords.

There's a recognized bug in the software of the human mind called the Bad Guy Bias. It means we only tend to worry about evil when it's committed by other human beings. To that I would add that we only worry about it when it's controversial - ie, other humans think it's not evil at all. Thus, we have millions of people worried about abortion, but almost no one worried about infant pneumonia, even though the latter kills many times more babies than the former, and if your goal was to prevent babies from dying you should focus on better health care for pneumonia sufferers.

I also find you incorrect in characterizing Arya as Nietzschian although you are correct it is the goal to return society to a heroic tradition based on the classics and romances of the past. "To follow the path of the ancients" is a common phrase in Aryez. Aryez is not Nietzschian because it is not nihilistic nor does it disparage weakness or "soft values."

This is a bit irrelevant to the discussion, but Nietzsche wasn't nihilist - in fact, I think of his philosophy as partly a reaction against and alternative to nihilism, and although he was sorta relativist I think it was in a very different way from today's relativists and he wouldn't've liked them very much. I accept that Arya's embrace of religious values makes it significantly different. It just struck me as the closest mainstream equivalent. I didn't mean it as an insult - I have a lot of respect for Nietzsche as a fellow Hyperborean.

Further, I recognize that the heroic noble tradition is an ideal- probably in most cases, just an ideal. Most people did not live in such a manner. However, I deem it important to have such an ideal accepted within society, so as to set a standard and a model of perfection and emulation- so that people have a goal of good living to reach towards. Tolkien was a great modern proponent of this noble idea. Nonetheless, unfortunately our age is saturated with relativism and lacks such noble ideals as models. I do not actually believe in much of the reality of such events or ideals- everything from Buddha to Christ and medieval knights and Samurai have become the stuff of legend but who knows what life was actually like in those gritty times. But that's what matters, the ideal. Perhaps I now sound a bit Nietzchian or Machiavellian by arguing that the ideal is more important than reality, and that the ideal might be propagandized for social value regardless of its truth. Perhaps.

I guess it depends how you do it. If you tell the common people that you're spreading myths that are good to live up to, then I suppose that's fine. If you personally know that your myths are false, but you try to convince the common people that they're true, that's morally sketchy...but of course, that's not my real objection to Arya. My main objection is that the ideal you're trying to spread is a bad ideal.

Firstly, I will not deny that you are correct in the gist of this. Nonetheless, in order to get away from the daily stresses and grinding of life, people DO need heros. They need not be real. But the ideal still matters. That is why people turn to fantasy books in large numbers, for example. Fantasy is a genre that thrives on man's need for a hero.

Naturalistic fallacy. I admit that humans have a drive to the heroic ideal. But for me, that drive to the heroic ideal is similar to the sex drive. The sex drive can be a very good thing, like when it leads to happy relationships or procreation or even just free love done right. But in our society, we've gone way beyond that, kindling the sex drive until it's pathological. The result is that we're obsessed with pornography, hookups, adultery, and so on. That humans have a sex drive is not an argument for trying to increase humans' sex drive. Any religion where you go to church on Sunday and get told you need to think about sex more would not be doing society a favor.

Yes, humans have a heroic drive. But that heroic drive is generally pathological in today's society. Think about our political system. The Democrats assume that universal health care is an obvious good that would save millions of lives with no downside, and that Republicans oppose it only because they want to make obscene profits by killing poor people. Republicans assume that universal health care is a Communist plot to destroy American industry, and that the Democrats only support it because they want to choke the last sparks of freedom out of the world. The thought of looking at the numbers, checking out what's happened in other countries that have used universal health care, running a complicated cost-benefit analysis, and coming up with a plan that takes the best parts of both sides doesn't occur to either group. Why not? Because they've been trained from birth to think in heroic mode, and so they assume one political party is heroes in shining armor, and the other is cartoonish villains. And they continue cheering for their side no matter what evidence comes in, because that's what heroes do. This is a good parable on the matter.

Our society has become so pathologically obsessed with thinking in hero mode that it's become completely incapable of solving basic problems without coming to the brink of civil war. I would suggest trying to train people out of hero mode so they stop being so crazy about stuff.

Which isn't to say let's deny that part of society completely. Tolkien's works are brilliant, and are well worth any tiny push in the direction of unhygienic thought processes they may provide. And since there's already a human drive towards heroism, stuff like Tolkien provides a relatively harmless outlet for that drive.

But for the love of God, don't actually form a religion where you tell people they should be more heroic all the time! That's like telling porn addicts they need to worry more about sex!

I think there are virtues we should be encouraging, and that a religion may be the proper way to encourage those virtues, but that they should specifically be the unheroic virtues - curiosity, willingness to change your mind when you find yourself on the wrong side, thinking everything through carefully before you do it, realizing that you may need to compromise sometimes - exactly the sort of thing that the Knights of the Round Table didn't do, but the sort of people who improve humanity today do.

People will learn about the heroic virtues without some formal religion around to teach them - all they need is to read Harry Potter or turn on the TV once in a while. Again, it's like the sex drive - we can expect people to have a really high level of it whether we teach them or not, so all we need to teach them is to restrain themselves before teenagers start getting pregnant (in the sex drive case), or militants start blowing themselves up (in the heroism case).

What you say about the bureaucrat makes sense. I am not against bureaucrats. Every complex society needs them. But it would be a bad world to live in when people cannot or do not also think in terms of good and evil. right or wrong. Bureaucrats can be trained in to think in terms of goodness (Confucianism) but do they really need to be? The question we must ask ourselves is this: what sort of sick society have we created where the entire class that manages society does not think in such terms. However, the nature of bureaucracy prevents this. Then all the best to have a limited bureaucracy and one filled with ones trained in virtue as well as practical things.

Maybe we have different ideas of the bureaucrats' jobs. I think of bureaucrats as being entirely against doing good and fighting evil. Take, again, the bureaucrat in the DMV. Her job is to prevent deaths by car accidents. This is fighting evil, just as someone who duels the Dark Lord Morgoth is fighting evil. Evil is whatever hurts human beings. Problems like Morgoth, cartoon villains with funny mustaches and Russian accents, and dark wizards account for only the tiniest percentage of the evil in the world. Problems like road traffic accidents, diseases, and poverty make up the rest. People like bureaucrats, doctors, and administrators of charity are doing good in the truest sense of the world, even though they don't run anyone through with swords.

There's a recognized bug in the software of the human mind called the Bad Guy Bias. It means we only tend to worry about evil when it's committed by other human beings. To that I would add that we only worry about it when it's controversial - ie, other humans think it's not evil at all. Thus, we have millions of people worried about abortion, but almost no one worried about infant pneumonia, even though the latter kills many times more babies than the former, and if your goal was to prevent babies from dying you should focus on better health care for pneumonia sufferers.

As a form of the heroic mode, the Bad Guy Bias is natural and will occur without any training. You don't need a religion telling people that Morgoth the Dark Lord is bad and they need to oppose him. People will hate Morgoth no matter what. You need a religion to tell people that while they were off arguing about who gets to swordfight the Dark Lord, more people just died of preventable diseases than the worst Dark Lord could kill in a thousand lifetimes. You need to teach them to think less in the familiar patterns of hero mode, not more.

I do believe that these bureaucratic virtues are true virtues, that they can be forged into a code of honor, and that we should instill this code of honor into every mind we can reach. But I don't think it will look anything like the "honor" of knights and samurai, and it will be quite opposite to the honor of most major religions (the better parts of Christianity and Buddhism aren't completely opposed to it, but they're not completely identical either).

And yes, once you're working on curing all those diseases and coming up with programs to stop road traffic accidents and so on, you can read some Tolkien or some Thomas Mallory on the side. But that's something you do for fun, not the essence of morality.

You use a lot of words like "nobility" and "chivalry", but you don't define them. As far as I can tell, these words are just nice-sounding words that make people happy when they use them. Unless they directly bear on the actual amount of good (benefit to people) or evil (harm to people) in the world, or unless they mean something else concrete, they're red herrings. This is why I disagree with some of your beliefs like that we should have more wars, because it would make people more noble.

...it's also the reason Arya reminds me of Nietzsche sometimes, although of course not all the time.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Others are welcome to jump in and contribute to this debate while I prepare a lengthy and appropriate response.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Essentially, we both know what each other is saying. We both stand on different sides of the issue and are not likely to convince each other. That being said, I will not attempt to refute you only to be counter refuted ad infinitum. I do thank you for pointing out Nietzsche's true nature as being non-nihilistic. I have some issues with him but in general I admire him, probably his thinking might have seeped in somewhere or the other (or Spengler's views, Spengler was a philosopher who lived slightly after Niez. and had similar views). As for some of the other things you mentioned such as bad guy bias and naturalistic fallacy, coming from your logical, rational ideology, such things can be explained through logical or biological means. Obviously, from my weltanschauung, which we have agreed is extremely different from yours, even in its basic assumptions, there are "higher"

Like the ancient and medieval traditions it tries to emulate, Arya is a system largely beholden to the "Way of the Ancients." That is why I do not attempt to really define the terms I use. They can be viewed in near-perfection in the classics (by this, I mean great works of the past, not Classical in the Greco-Roman sense). This is another issue, but I essentially operate on a cyclical historical theory so literature written during the golden ages is generally more accepted than other works. Such terms, through description and implication in the established corpus are self-revealing. After all, a perfect, unchanging law of truth and nobility is woven into the Universe (based on this view).

You are right in the general idea that we can't and we are not planning to create a government out of this philosophy, whose values merely exist to influence governmental and people in general. My political theory is an entirely different matter. It is considerably less mature than my theological theory so I won't be presenting a political system perhaps for a couple of years, even though you can obviously see my leanings in whatever I write.

In conclusion then, Arya is Arya, a somewhat nostalgic system. This is a mark of honor for us though.