The Rationale of Tradition
In the modern world where liberalism is the dominant force in society, religion and culture have come to be viewed at best as unimportant or at worst evil. This is a direct product of the materialist beliefs of liberalism being taken to their logical extreme, as well as its attempts to create hostility between science and religion. While liberalism in its earliest days did not seek the total destruction of religion, the use of liberalism to dismantle religious beliefs has its roots in its very origin, the Italian Renaissance. During the Renaissance, some of the first secular belief systems emerged in the west. The popularity of these beliefs increased in tandem with opposition to the Catholic Church. This opposition, however, was against the corruption within the church rather than the concept of divinity itself, hence why when the Reformation began, Protestantism became the center of opposition to Catholicism instead of atheism. But the precedent of rebelling against spiritual ideas had been set, and this would contribute to the atheist aspects of liberalism becoming more prominent overtime. This idea of atheism would come to fruition in the French Revolution, where the liberal rebels would attempt to completely divorce spirituality from all aspects of society. This was in contrast to the American liberals, who only opposed the political power of religious officials rather than religion itself. From this point onwards the atheistic ideals of the French Revolution would begin to propagate throughout the western world. The influence of these ideals was reinforced by the scientific discoveries, industrial advancements, nationalist wars, and imperial expansions made through the 19th century. The rapid pace of these developments meant that traditional religions were unable to adapt to the new society that had taken shape, allowing liberalism to assert itself as the dominant force while sidling religious institutions. Liberalism proclaimed that it was an idea built on reason and logic, in contrast to the supposedly irrational religions, and that it would provide more success in bringing knowledge and understanding to society.
This logic was cemented in the 20th century, where the traditional world was reduced to ashes in World War One. The sheer devastation of the war proved to be the colloquial nail in the coffin for religion, best expressed in the phrase “Death of God”. In its place liberalism had become the new basis for Western Civilization. However, it still did not provide much respite from the suffering of the Great War. As such, the interwar period became a hotbed for new ideas that could challenge liberalism, the biggest forces being communism and nazism. The fact that these movements were materialist in nature, much like liberalism itself, further demonstrates the destruction of faith, as no spiritual based movement was able to rise to the challenge. These ideologies came into conflict in World War Two and the Cold War, which saw liberalism emerge victorious, but not completely. Communism was proclaimed defeated in the Cold War, but remnants of its ideals survived and began to become more popular amongst liberals. Beginning as early as the 60s, in the leftist counter culture movement, liberalism began to take on aspects of hedonism and decadence, believing that society should be solely dedicated to providing pleasure to the masses. The transformation was the result of the combination of the nihilism brought by the desolation of the world wars, the fear of nuclear annihilation resulting from the cold war, in conjunction with the material prosperity brought by the post war economy. And in the view of liberalism, the only force holding hedonism back was religion and the traditional cultures associated with it. The temperance and discipline promoted by religion was incompatible with the hedonistic ideals that were becoming in vogue. As such the liberals began to embrace the Marxist cultural policy, that claimed religion and tradition were inherently irrational, mere tools of enslavement meant to oppress the people. This would manifest in an alliance between liberals and leftists. This alliance was further solidified in economic policy once the cold war ended. Both leftists and liberals opposed free market capitalism, believing that it was immoral for individuals to have to earn prosperity. They argued that society must provide equal prosperity to everyone. Naturally the concept of a government providing wealth and luxury for society became appealing to the liberal-leftist alliance. With this new coalition established, they sought to finally end both culture and religion, and create a new society dedicated to comfort and decadence.
The main idea that is at the center of their argument is that religion and culture are irrational, which is wrong. Religion and culture are rational, in fact they are an integral aspect of humanity. Culture and religion are themselves a science, one meant to discover the truth of why we exist. What is our purpose in life and the universe? What is the universal truth? These are questions that define our humanity, separating us from other animals. Only we possess the intelligence to ask such a question, and religion and culture was ultimately created for that purpose. Take this away, and we become little more than savages. Hence why societies without religion and culture either collapse or, intentionally/unintentionally, create another system that is basically religion in everything but name, as if subconsciously trying to fix their mistake. This can be seen in the cults of personality created in dictatorships, or the glorification of victimhood in western nations.
As its purpose was to find the purpose of existence, religion supported both philosophical and scientific research. Indeed, religion has for the entirety of history up to the modern era heavily supported the sciences, as an understanding how the physical world functioned would be key to determining the purpose for creation of humanity and reality. Through his research religion also began determining the ethics and values by which society lived by, which in turn altered the culture of society, as culture in essence was an expression of the mindset of the people within a society. Hence why governments that sought to gain complete control of society have attempted to censor artists, educators and religious officials, as they controlled the culture of nations by altering the mindset of the people, essentially being engineers of the human soul. The end goal was that a traditional religious society was one based on teleology, attempting to find the objective truth. It is no accident that the modern liberal-leftist alliance has begun to promote the movement of postmodernism, the idea that there is no objective truth. They are aware of the true purpose of spirituality and by extension culture and tradition, and have resolved to destroy the very reason for their existence. But they will fail, because there is truth, there is an objective reality. There is no questioning it, the universe has existed long before humanity, it will exist long after humanity, and it has a purpose. The only question is how much damage they will do before understanding this fact of reality.
Seeing how important religion and culture are, the nation must defend their cultural and religious institutions if they want their nations to be preserved. More importantly, a new view of God must be found. It is clear that there must be a paradigm shift in how spirituality is understood, if tradition is to thrive in the new world. A second Renaissance will be needed, in order for humanity to rediscover its faith and reunite science and divinity. The first step in this process will be a refinement of how the world is understood. The modern idea of political economy must be updated, so that the interaction between political, economic, cultural, geographic, technological and biological forces are understood, thus allowing for a more in depth understanding of the world.
