Over the last few posts, the Band has been reacting to the arrival of Modernism in America by considering the three pillars of Western culture and what they mean for the culture of the West. It's been a bit meandering because we're straddling a huge gulf of time - toggling between ancient roots and 20th-century inversions in the most general way. This lets us see how dishonest, incoherent, and disconnected official culture has become from the people it claims to represent. But cutting through the offal is just the necessary first step.
Daryl Mandryk, Winterblade, giclée print on paper
Modern culture is so degraded because it has rejected truth - empirical and metaphysical - for atavism and self-serving lies. We have the misfortune of living amidst the inevitable result. Going back to the beginning lets us isolate and excise the webs of deception and reconnect with the reality where beauty and creativity are possible - the conditions that built the West in the first place.
The blade and the plough combine in vertical logos, a relationship between Christianity, the Classical inheritance, and the European nations based in truth and observation This is the exact opposite of modern culture - honest, coherent, and connected. So far, we've looked at the fit between abstract Classical reason and the ultimate reality of Christian theology. Now it is time to come down to earth by adding the nations, where we can see the emergence of the West as it happened.
Painter with painted statue and painting, from Pompeii, after 79 AD, fresco, Museo Archeologico, Naples
Art is a window into how people in the past represented themselves to each other. In many cases, we can see the same things they did, and even recreate entire settings. It isn't the same as actually being there - not much survives from the ancient past, and in many cases we lack the cultural knowledge to grasp the connotations and nuances in an old picture. But it's a lot more credible than sitting in a debt-funded office and projecting the rage and pain of personal inadequacy into nonsensical lies about imaginary grievances.
The arts also are a decent proxy for large sociological and economic patterns because they require resource allocation for things that aren't directly survival related. Figure out who the clients and style-setters are, and the images they produce will tell you a lot about the ideologies and priorities of the social elites. The common people had much less opportunity to acquire art, but where we do have cultures with folk art, inexpensive prints, and so forth, we get a similar glimpse into their social worlds.
Late Republican fresco from Room H of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, 50-40 BC, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Unknown figures of regal bearing from an upper-class Roman villa. The woman plays a kithara - a large instrument played by Apollo and professional musicians - in a dining room (triclinium) or room for social gatherings (oecus). In addition to the setting, the painting gives information about upper-class furniture and clothing - the women wear purple chitons and a white himation on the seated woman - as well as how a kithera player held the instrument.
Late Republican fresco from Room H of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, 50-40 BC, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Possibly the owners, from the grand triclinium. The frescoes derive from the Hellenistic tradition of megalographia - the large-scale painting that the Romans fell in love with. The heroic nudity of the man and pensive expression on the woman were typical Greek features.
Note how skillfully the figures are depicted, individually and together. The quality tells us that the patron was a person of refined taste and the means to afford it.
Notions of class are implicit in art. Not just what you can afford, but the sort of things you profess to like. The Modern system of the arts uses pretentious theory and globalist wealth to create a fake culturati class. This fits the pattern of the cult leader making followers declare belief in obvious falsehoods - empty lies internalized to the point that they become self-defining. And the outcome is this as an actual headline in an actual newspaper:
Artist calls 'bull****' on pretentious art world by sitting naked and silent on a toilet for hours on end at New York gallery
Lisa Levy, The Artist Is Humbly Present, 2019, performance, Christopher Stout Gallery, New York
Consider an "artist" sitting nude on a toilet for two five-hour periods and taking questions from passers by to protest pretension in the art world. Apparently "ego and pretense' has 'seriously f****d' with the quality of work being produced in the art world" and it needs a foul-mouthed naked ugly boomer to...There's really no point continuing.
Typical of art world discourse, the "performance" is a response to older nonsense - Podesta fave Marina Abramović's celebrated The Artist is Present. This 2010 MOMA performance consisted of a Satanic freak staring silently into the eyes of passers-by.
Modern art claims to provoke questions. So ask who pays to attend this shit? Who defines themselves by gushing about it on social media? What B-grade commentators write and blog on it? Is Levy an actual retard? And is that George Takai?
The art world is an inverted hierarchy of doomed souls chasing chasing prestige through perversion and cultural atavism - both in their work and personal conduct. Something like Abramović has made it because she gets to sit in the MOMA, while anklebiter Levy is stuck in a second-rate gallery in Brooklyn. But there is no substance beyond the ability to please the demons above you while undercutting those scrambling from below. It's why these creeps alternate so easily between scornful pretension and unctuous fluffing - literally and figuratively - depending on relative power. But to hollow themselves out to the point that they self-define by this, they must first convince themselves that masturbatory jargon about a two-tone square or thimble of menstrual blood matters.
Money and ideology drive art in the ancient world as well, only here the elites were always some combination of religion and direct rulership, which were pretty much the same thing.
Temple of Ramesses II, 13th century BC, Abu Simbel, Egypt
The ancient arts assert an ideological spin on cultural norms rather than tear them down because imperial power was open and not subversive.
Ramesses' art doesn't deny the gods - it sets him among them.
It's a bit broader in Rome, which as far as we can tell was saturated in the visual arts compared to most ancient societies. It's hard to say exactly why this was, since cultural characteristics often lack a single explanation. Rome was prosperous for a long time, with a relatively large upper and "middle" class clienteles. And the taste for painting and sculpture that came with the conquest of Greece seemed to imprint an artistic consciousness onto the Roman elites that could trickle down through the culture over the long life of the empire. This isn't anything historically provable - it looks like acquiring art was something you just did at the appropriate class level. More unconscious cultural norm than anything theoretical.
Column of Marcus Aurelius, Doric victory column modeled on Trajan's Column, completed by 193, restored in 1589, Piazza Colonna, Rome
Victory column commemorating Marcus Aurelius' defeat of Germanic tribes and covered in relief carvings. This imprints the power and of emperor and state onto the fabric of the city. It also gives us information about Roman culture, whether the kinds of wooden structures used, the disposition of troops, or the appeal to a river god to save them from a flood.
Here too, art is a class marker - the imperial artists set the style, the wealthy support a big market for derivative work of varying quality, and the lower classes have rougher folk or artisanal work.
Base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, devoted AD 161, Vatican Museums
All that remains of a column similar to Marcus Aurelius' dedicated to the emperor Antoninus Pius. High-level imperial public sculpture in the Classical Greek style set the standard for elite taste. The relief depicts the apotheosis or divination of the emperor - the fusion of religion and rulership that made up official Roman ideology. The side reliefs show the decursio - cavalry maneuvers that were part of the divination ritual.
Portonaccio sarcophagus, around 190-200, Museo Nazionale Romano Palazzo Massimo
Carved sarcophagi were incredibly popular in Rome. This very high-level example shows the trickle-down of imperial style into the elite classes. It held one of Marcus Aurelius' generals and and there are stylistic similarities to the victory column that we just looked at.
The designs were based on centuries-old Hellenistic models from Pergamon showing the continuing Roman taste for Greek art.
Sarcophagi are fascinating - huge numbers of them survive and they came a wide range of quality and subject matter. In the spirit of Baltimore, here are three from the Walters Art Museum and one from Grosseto for breadth.
Sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysus, around 190, Thasian marble; Garland Sarcophagus, between 150 and 180, Dokimeion marble; Sarcophagus with Griffins, between 140 and 170, marble, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Strigilated Sarcophagus for a boy, around 270-280 AD, Maremma Archaeology and Art Museum, Grosseto
A lot of what we know about Roman sculpture comes from sarcophagi. They made up a significant industry, mass-produced in big workshops in a range of qualities and styles.
The Dionysus sarcophagus at the top is high quality with complex and detailed reliefs. The scene depicts the procession that symbolized the divination of the soul in the Dionysian mystery cult.
The Garland sarcophagus is less complex with mythological and theatrical imagery. The lid is pedimented like a temple and and the deceased is likely depicted on the right. The Tragedy mask is balanced by a Comedy one on the other side.
The sarcophagus with griffins has more Dionysian imagery while the one on the bottom is an inexpensive model with a few symbolic figures and a portrait of the deceased.
Art doesn't tell us why things happened, but it does show us what was happening. And this is the most important reason why the Band is responding with the Satanic inversions of Modernism with a return to the roots of the West. When we see what our art does - what it IS - we are given an organic alternative to the empty lies of the globalists. Taking out the trash is very important, but so is providing an alternative. Understanding where our art came from lets us see where our culture came from. Our real culture, in its full multi-dimensional richness of material virtue tethered by logos to Truth. Or how we will create our future.
The Band doesn't look at our roots for something to copy. That's servants of the lie country. The point is to understand how we find beauty in reality. Because that is how aesthetics and morality traditionally combined to guide society.
Chronologically, the three pillars of the West are the Classical philosophical and legal traditions, Christianity, and the nationalities of Europe, The Band is not the first to note this, but it is obvious with even a moment's reflection on history. Each appears at different points in time, but weave together into distinct cultures under a shared assumptions that is the West. They've come up in earlier posts, but now that we've looked more closely into Christian Logos, it is easy to see how they fit together.
Constantino Brumidi, Frieze of American History, started 1877, fresco, U.S. Capitol
The historical necessity of the three pillars can be difficult for some to grasp. The West is such a long patchwork of organically-developing pieces jostling together that the fractal depth of the historical record can be overwhelming.
Ferdinand Richardt, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, 1858-63, oil on canvas, White House Collection, Washington DC
Others fear and pervert Christianity, pretending that the problem of evil or the advantages of inward-directed morality radiate from magic dirt and long-ignored hemp paper idols. Philly's changed a bit.
There's also the matter of the pillars being very different in nature and interacting in different ways. One is a set of ideas, one a logos-based religion and morality, and one a set of distinct and often hostile peoples. Our vertical concept of logos sidesteps the maze of specific interactions and just look at the structure. Once we can see how the pillars work structurally, we can see how a specific like Modern America fits within the pattern, avoid getting tangled in endless specifics, and see out way out of the maze.
Victor Bregeda, Condensed Meta-Reality, oil on canvas
This is why we took the time to work out the relationship between logos, levels of ontology, and the relationship between truth and discernment in a general way. Starting with what we can know and how we can know it doesn't guaranteed us the answers we would like. But we can be sure that our observations are actually consistent with human reality. The point of sifting for truth in all this dreck is to identify legitimate foundations for a healthy culture. As we are seeing, building on lies always comes a-cropper.
The vertical concept of logos that connects experience to higher truths is the product of the first two pillars - Classical thought and Christianity. We can call this the the antique legacy, since both came to Europe via the Roman empire, and it is the moral and intellectual foundation that underpins the West. We've considered it in a broad theoretical way because its preconceptions and ideals are abstract and universal, but can only be grasped conceptually. To be seen directly, they have to manifest, and that brings us into the messy, entropic world of experience. We can see this in our vertical logos diagram from an earlier post:
Once things turn towards specific manifestations, we've plunged into the entropic, subjective, material world. Here, all the abstracts are hidden behind veils of time and change, and humans develop different attitudes, languages and cultures - based on shared, localized interactions and experiences. This is where nations come from.
Nation is an abstract noun, but not abstract in an ontological sense like Truth or God. They are timeless, outside and indifferent to our changing material reality. Nations are the opposites - they're develop organically out of specific human reactions to changing material conditions. If the abstractions were clear to us, we would call them top-down, but they are more a guide to reality - logic and faith to figure out how to navigate this confusing world. Higher guides to be sure, but to the reality we exist in. They don't impose obvious lies through force, like the top-down secular transcendences that we've been dismantling from the start. Nations are pure bottom up - subjective reactions to different circumstances - so they can differ widely in appearance while keeping to the abstract.
This is how we get the nature of the West as a group of different cultures within a common epistemological and ontological framework.
Classical thought and Christian theology are abstracts. You can understand them, but you can't see or feel them. Logos connects utter transcendence and material reality, but the way it manifests depends on the level.
Ultimate reality/God/Truth is absolutely consistent and certain but completely beyond our discernment. Material reality is within our discernment but deceptive and always changing.
Logos manifests in our behavior as truthfulness within the limits of our discernment. The Band can make mistakes, but we always present what we believe to be true and show our reasoning so anyone who wants to can critique how we got there. This is the best we can do, since we are all shaped by our contexts, experiences, and personal characteristics. But this is also how we can differ while serving the Truth within our limits. Cultural preferences in aesthetics, social arrangements, entertainment, and food are all localized developments incidental to metaphysical notions of Truth. There is lower-level logos, or logic, in the way people respond to circumstances, but the circumstances depend entire on time and place.
It's pretty obvious.
Adapting housing to climate is a logical reaction to specific circumstances. Changing designs when improved materials or techniques become available or new needs emerge is also a logical reaction to specific circumstances.
But none of this expresses Truth directly.
This is relevant to art because decorative schemes are only "logical" to the extent that they reflect logos, and aesthetic choices are highly culturally subjective. Consider these two churches, both designed and decorated to express Christian logos in perfectly internally consistent and completely different-looking ways.
Postnik Yakovlev, St. Basil's Cathedral, 1555-1561, Moscow; Edward Welby Pugin, St. Mary and St. Finnan's Church, Glenfinnan, Scotland
To use our Greek terms, both have logos in techne because both create structured aesthetic experiences with ordered technical skill. Both reflect the episteme of of Christian logos in a sincere way. Both therefore express phronesis - techne guided by episteme or art that orients towards Truth.
And both look completely different.
The pillars of the West combine despite being different because they operate on different ontological levels. Christianity answers the logical questions about ultimate reality - the blank space beyond the end of the logic tree - with a theology that conforms to the empirical experience.
We referred to this domain as faith in our early epistemology diagrams, but whatever you call it, it's subject is the top level of the ontological hierarchy.
From here, vertical Logos shines "downwards" - the spatial metaphors are simplifications for the sake of clarity - providing the immanent reason in the universe and moral direction in our behavior.
Classical thought operates in the abstract spaces in-between. All the systematic abstract thinking - logic, metaphysics, moral reasoning, political philosophy, justice, aesthetics, civic virtue, etc. - that applies logos to experience. The immanent reason behind appearances we know through math and logic and intuit as fairness.
Christian theology provides the meaning, but Classical thinkers reasoned out the structure. Ontology and epistemology are Greek words. Logos too.
The nations are where we move from the abstract to the purely material. From things known conceptually to the realm of empirical experience. Nations develop organically, through empirical responses to material circumstances. This makes them "arbitrary" and different.
But the different responses - the distinct cultures - are all shaped by a common traditions of Christian morality and abstract reasoning. A shared kinship beneath some significant empirical differences.
This is why the Flatland thinking of secular transcendence goes so awry - it completely misses the interplay between "vertical" logos and the "horizontal" material world that gives the West its distinctive character. Like the implicit separation of church and state on ontological lines that we dug into in the last post. They collapse logos and pretend conceptual things are found in the material world. But the material world is known empirically - what is or isn't, while abstracts are known conceptually, and ultimate reality by faith. The operate on us by different processes, exist in different ways, and apply to different contexts.
This leaves them with category error after category error, seeking Truth with telescopes and finding objective morality in strongly-felt opinions. Then, when time and entropy expose their ideals, they are left proclaiming knowledge by faith of empirical untruths. Over and over.
Limiting reality to what you want to understand reduces the complexities of ontology to simple truisms and binaries that are fake but easy to grasp. Like the issue of free will. There are no absolutes in material reality. Absolutes are theoretical abstractions and cannot be seen in themselves. Every empirical observation falls short of philosophical absolutism. It takes a special blend of stupidity and self-righteousness to hold material human experience to a materially-impossible standard of perfection. Apparently the notion of free choice within an uncertain system is a bridge too far.
Consider the "structuralist revolution" that prefigured Postmodernism and supposedly upended the notion of sovereign subject in Enlightenment metaphysics. The so-called Cartesian "I". This is the idea that each of us is a free and discreet self observing a separate external world as if from an imaginary lookout post. This is consistent with our empirical self-perception and the Christian notion of free will, but only if you can grasp where they fit together and how they move past one another.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Soul Carried to Heaven, 1878, oil on canvas
Christian free will comes from the idea that each person is a unique soul with the ability to choose to a path of truth and escape the fog of Satanic inversion. But it also recognizes that we have a fallen, finite perspective and have to make our way through an uncertain world of endless deception with limited empirical tools.
Christian epistemology maps this with a couple of passages that the Band often refers to. Taken together, we have empirical knowledge and logical judgments in excerpt from Matthew and the limits of discernment in Corinthians.
These are excerpts - it's the full passages provide more explanation.
These are both possible because Christian ontology is vertical - Old Testament theology and Classical metaphysics recognized this. Truth can exist and be impossible to access in itself because they operate on different levels. We have the freedom to make choices, but our range is limited to whatever misty orchard we happen to be gathering fruits in. In Enlightenment Flatland, transcendence is secular, so Truth and our finite fallen perceptions have to be found in the same place.
So, either the misty orchard includes crystaline views of the whole of reality or Truth can't exist.
The Flatlanders start positive - Enlightenment rationalism sought Truth in the orchard and proclaimed faith in things that are empirically false. Just scan the history of cosmological models since Reason!.
Trade card for Benjamin Cole, Fleet Street, London, 1766-1782
"Mathematical and Optical Instruments of all Sorts Accurately made according to the Best & Latest Improvements By Benjamin Cole at the Orrery"
Orreries were popular in the post-Newtonian period, many learned types were expressing faith that human reason would decode the secrets of the cosmos.
And this hasn't gone away. All the nonsense civnat metaphysical dogma that inadvertently serves the globalist lie comes from another Enlightenment secular transcendence - blank slate equalism.
So Flatland turns the vertical arrangement of empirical finitude and unclear Truth - assessing fruits through a darkling glass - into fake truth-claims about about the entropic, temporal material world. Instead of the depth and richness of logos pointing us towards a Truth we can't quite see, we get lots of words cleverly rehashing other words in a constant search for novelty, but going nowhere.
Let's see. Endless, recursive webs with no connection to reality... Why, it's
Here's some Socratic method to ponder: what has philosophy achieved since the Enlightenment?
It's been a bit since discourse has been caught skulking around the Band, so it's worth revisiting the main thing that makes this Postmodern term for the artificial nature of reality hard to define. Here's an earlier post on the universality of discourse and its importance in Postmodern "thought", if you're curious. What's important here is to be aware that discourse can be thought of as both a form and content, and that Postmodernists oscillate between them. The content is the baffling stream of words - the hermetic jargon that excludes outsiders and creates a priestly air of authority. The form is the whole institutional culture of secular transcendent nonsense that modernity is built on - where aggregating word streams is Progress! towards Truth. In other words, the form of discourse is Flatland.
Unfortunately for the fantasists, you can keep discourse-the-form and reject discourse-the-specific word stream because there is no recognition of vertical distinctions. There's no Truth to serve as a guide - just the things you really want to be true. The whole thing derives from ontological falsehood - the equivalent to starting with 1+1=3. You can make whatever streams you want - they just have to be convince an audience conditioned to accept inversion and question their senses.
Some may wonder why Postmodernism wasn't figuratively strangled in the crib back in the 70s and 80s, before it took over all our cultural institutions. The answer is because the turn away from truth took place much sooner, with fake secular transcendences like rationalism, equalism, socialism, and atheism preceding the more current iterations. There were no defenders of Truth, because the institutions had left Truth on altar of vanity centuries earlier. There was just discourse. And discourse can declare dead atheists racist just as easily as it can pretend that they are Truth.
As for the fantasists that built their prestige on the old fables? They were permitted to keep their fat benefit packages and even allowed a bit of impotent op-ed harumphing, so long as they didn't seriously rock the boat and kept lowering the bar for the diversity. The dirty secret is that a lot of the "eminent" faculty were bloviating poseurs coasting on decades-old scholarship. One can't expect much defense of intellectual standards from the pomposities that hollowed them out for personal gain in the first place. But the Yale Club does welcome faculty...
"Pity about Shakespeare. Have you tried the oysters?"
There are several vectors for a new discourse-the-content like globohomo to attack older ones. Since Flatland is secular and materialist, any evidence that the old word streams were problematic can undermine the entire world view. And because this is all taking place in discourse-the-form, it doesn't even have to be true - Science! is a big part of Flatland faith. It just has to be accepted, like declaring moral repulsiveness bravery in oppression circles, then redefining reality as wrong because it opposes brave heroes.
Gerard Hoet, Olympia Presenting The Young Alexander The Great To Aristotle, late 17th-early 18th century, oil on canvas, private collection
When reality doesn't matter, discourse can make any "argument" that the gatekeepers want, no matter how ridiculous. Aristotle wrote a defense of slavery and worked for a tyrant so logic is racist.
You can also attack the form of the discourse itself. Deconstruction consisted of endlessly pointing out the semiotic limits of language in order to get publications and advance careers built on language. Of all the fake secular transcendences to slither through the ivy'd halls, this might be the most transparently absurd. Obviously, the faculty clubbers didn't stop writing books in the now deconstructed discourse - they wrote books where meaning was "suspended", "withheld", "adumbrated", or "problematized". Making up whatever they wanted, so long as it furthers the corrosive globalism of the gatekeepers.
Tom Clark, Emily Finlay and Philippa Kelly, Worldmaking: Literature, language, culture, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017
Which is how we get this indeterminate jumble of random "engagements" with "worlds as malleable constructs". A collection of epistemologically nonsensical vanity projects talking past each other that no one reads with titles like: "My World or Yours? Otherness and the Construction of Culture: Hegel, Levinas, Blanchot", "Art, Detritus and Global Change", and a personal favorite, the Onionesque "Rethinking hybridity: Amputated Selves in Asian Diasporic Identity Formation". Just think about this for a moment. John Benjamins is a reputable academic publisher of "theoretical" subjects - a middling narrative gatekeeper. Where can this go?
To make things clearer, consider the article "Earthing the World: The Artwork of Lorraine Connelly-Northey".
And some work from Lorraine Connelly-Northey:
O'Possum Skin Cloak, 2007, rusted galvanised iron; O'Possum Skin Cloak, 2007; rusted barbed wire; Narrbong' (string bag) 2007, chicken wire
In case you were wondering what earthing meant.
An academic system built on disconnected subjective blather will accept any absurdity for nickels
Logos doesn't matter here. Remember, discourse has no connection to truth. It is the operating system of Flatland founded on willful ontological error - a closed ecosystem of "stakeholders" who determine what word streams are acceptable. To replace an old word stream, you have to be "convincing" - asserting what the stakeholders want to be true while discrediting the old one. Which brings us back to free will - an article of faith for Enlightenment and Postmodern Flatlanders alike, although on opposite sides of a fake binary.
Victor Bregeda, Ever Learning, oil on canvas
The Christian notion of free will takes ontological distinctions into consideration, and is therefore capable of imagining personal choice in a state of imperfect understanding. Discernment is finite, which is why there is a faith-based morality at the end of the Logos axis.
The Enlightenment flattened this notion of free will with finite discernment into secular transcendence - fake faith in an sovereign self or consciousness independent from the world it dispassionately observes. This replaces the old body-soul dualism with body-mind, paving the way for rationalism, blank-slate egalitarianism, and all the other fantasies of perfect human understanding.
Victor Vasnetsov, The Flying Carpet, 1880
Consider the plague of theories breaking down the distinction between the subjective self and the objective world, with each promising the real story.
Ignore the distinctions and consider what these have in common. They all work against the clear distinction between a self and the external world - however defined. Each has it's own jargon and heroes, but all of them look to deny human agency. This has the benefit of undermining Western Christian morality, with distinctions between good and evil and the responsibility to choose. It also removes any personal accountability outside of whatever narrative the "theorists" are offering up. What makes this so insidious is that all of them have some elements of truth.
We are shaped by experience and genetics in ways we often can't see. Our perspectives are limited to the things we are exposed to and the languages we use. Mass behavior has proven predictable and easily manipulated And reality does seem like a show at times.
These are all examples of the Philosophical Bait and Switch - a common secular transcendent ruse where a subjective, temporal, and/or circumstantial observation is claimed to be a universal truth.
We can completely change our minds. And outliers exist. The impulse behind the Philosophical Bait and Switch is human vanity - the inability to accept that we live in a material realm that exceeds the limits of our discernment. So people cling to the reassuring if toxic fiction that our opinions about our personal experiences and contexts have universal meaning. This removes responsibility for thinking - if the world is uncertain, we constantly have to consider new information, recalibrate old assumptions, and make new moral judgments in full awareness that we may be wrong.
Fake theories of reality lift the burden of thought and give you a plug-and-play model for anything.
Unfortunately, the price is your relationship with reality.
Frans Francken the Younger, Mankind's Eternal Dilemma -The Choice Between Virtue and Vice, 1633, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Arguing over whether we are a discrete self or determined is a fake conflict - a Flatland civil war - that stops people from looking up. Why? Because both are true.
It's both at once. It's vertical.
We are subjective and given to short-term comforts. Reality is real and indifferent to our desires. The in-between is blurry. Like trying to judge fruit through a darkling glass. But the secular materialist has to choose one or the other. His flattened perspective has no space for notions of material freedom within metaphysical constraints, so the multi-dimensional relationships of consciousness and context are mystifying. The subjective, the real, and the fog all have to be accounted for in the same way.
But it's overcrowded down in Flatland. And there's a bigger problem. The material world does not conform to abstract moral principles.
Lorenzo Lotto, Allegory of Virtue and Vice, 1505, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Principles are immaterials that we use to chart a course through the material world. It would be nice if they were right there in front of you to guide the path. But you can only see them working through something.
On the material level, logos manifests in response to material circumstance. It looks different in different in different times and places. It's what makes moral judgment necessary.
It's what gave us the European nations. And it's why the lying globalist Flatlanders of all stripes - rationalists, equalists, socialists, lolbertarians, the "oppression" industry, utopians, luciferians, etc. - are united in their hostility to nationalism. Nations - organic, subjective, and contingent - fit in on the material level of our hierarchy. You come to know them purely empirically, and they don't conform to any fake secular transcendence rule kit. Like the people that make them up, national cultures can align with logos, but do so in ways that reflect their circumstances because the Truth is outside of the material. They don't have hard, theoretical definitions because they aren't higher ontological entities. You know them to see them. Empirically.
Modern Flatland tries to jam the metaphysics into the material and conflate political authority with power over reality. The luciferian nature of globohomo is diametrically opposed to the distinctions of vertical logos on the most fundamental level. That's why it's Satanic.
The Flatland thinking of secular transcendence goes so awry because it completely misses the hierarchical nature of ontology - of "being" - that lets a nation be organic and morally directed at the same time. Trying to put the moral direction in material reality asks it to provide something it simply can't. Or to put it in traditionally Western terms:
Why approach this through art? Because we can see it. Art visualizes the abstract aspects of a culture in culturally-specific forms. It's why so much Western art represents the same themes in such different ways - Christian morality and Classical heritage expressed in different national terms. In Flatland, they pretend the world will conform to their desires. The empiricist starts with the world before assessing the desires. Turn that attention to history and our ancestors will show you what they were. You just need to look.
Dura-Europos church. converted for worship between 233 and 256, Dura-Europos, Syria
We can see it in the appearance of Christian art. Dura-Europos was a town on the Roman-Persian border abandoned in late antiquity and home of the oldest identified Christian church. The earliest Christians worshiped in relatively simple converted houses before the appearance of specialized buildings.
The frescoes have been moved to the Yale University Art Gallery - the photo is the recreation of the main room and baptismal font. The fresco is an early representation of Jesus as the Good Shepherd - one of the first ways Christians tried to symbolize this unique figure.
Remember, the Old Testament religion was explicitly hostile to religious images and early Christians rejected pagan idolatry to the point of persecution. Looking at the formative years, there is no obvious impulse to develop a Christian religious art. We also observed that the humanity of Christ provided a counter-argument - that God put on a face that can be seen. Historically, neither perspective proved definitive, and Christians have taken just about every perspective on images in the centuries since.
Debate over icons before the emperor, miniature from Skylitzis Chronicle, MS Graecus Vitr. 26-2, fol. 50v, 12th century, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid
The Byzantine Iconoclasm (726-787 and 814-842 was an extreme rejection of images. The Protestant Iconoclasm was another (mid-16th century).
Historically, the discussion around Christian art has been on the legitimacy of the arguments - are the images legitimate, and in what ways? But the more interesting question from a nationalist perspective is why did the argument have to be made in the first place?
Consider - Christianity had been established in Rome for over a century before the first art appears. There may be evidence lost to the ravages of time, but the existing historical record suggests that it took Christians a while to start making art. What happened is that the identities of the Christians changed.
James Tissot, The Golden Calf, before 1903, watercolor
But Christianity was evangelical and expansionist, and spread rapidly into the centers of Greco-Roman antiquity. This brought waves of new Christians with completely different cultural attitudes towards art - not just for religious purposes but everywhere. The Hellenistic Greek legacy was much stronger in the Eastern Empire, but the Western Empire was saturated with pictures as well.
The wedding of Zephyrus and Chloris, 54-68 AD fresco from Pompeii, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples
Scene from Greek myth with surrounding wall shows how heavily painted Roman domestic interiors were. Pompeii was prosperous, but not a center of imperial elites, so it's a window into ordinary life in the 1st-century empire. Artistically, it wasn't a style-setter, but a provincial reflection of the dominant styles of the time. The sketchy technique is typical of the Hellenistic style of painting that was popular in Rome, and like the subject matter, reflects the Roman love of Greek culture.
We've already observed how art defined class and identity - add the religious uses that we looked at in the last post and just about every aspect of Roman life had some pictorial dimension. It didn't have to be this way - other cultures were less oriented around art. The notion that a culture expresses itself visually is one of those organic, circumstantial, non-transcendent material level developments that defines nations.
Our graphic shows Christianity and Classical thought informing national cultures without dictating their exact forms. But this is an ontological diagram based on what is possible for finite creatures to know. Metaphysicals aren't materially visible and cultures don't have to align with logos and Truth.
The visual nature of Greco-Roman culture is not in itself an acceptance or rejection of logos because it is historically contingent. An accident. It's what you do with the pictures that matters morally.
To be clear, we are not saying Rome was a nation in Western terms - the empire was an imperialist polyglot territory and we don't have the demographic background information on exactly who was painting the first catacomb pictures. What we are doing is identifying one characteristic of nations - the material-level, non-transcendent ways that historical cultures form. There are no transcendent rules down here - you have to look up for those. The only epistemologically-legitimate way to acquire factual knowledge is to observe empirically the evidence that we have. And what we can see is that when people with an observable cultural tendency towards visual expression converted to a new religion without a visual component, the figured out how to express their belief system pictorially.
Dura-Europos synagogue, completed by 244 AD, Dura-Europos, Syria, frescos in the National Museum, Damascus
A synagogue was also discovered at Dura-Europos that was roughly contemporary with the house church. It is historically noteworthy both for its age - one of the oldest known synagogues - and for the pictures covering the walls. This is extremely unusual, since Judaism generally avoids religious images on Second Commandment grounds. Without the Incarnation, there is no face for God.
Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, mid-3rd century, fresco, west wall, Dura Europos synagogue
Look more closely at the figures. Notice how Moses has Roman dress and grooming. This tells us that these people who made this fresco were conceptualizing Hebrew leadership in Roman terms. Makes sense - they were Romans in the Hellenized east.
David anointed by Samuel, mid-3rd century, fresco, west wall, Dura Europos synagogue; Emperor Justinian and his suite, after 540, San Vitale, Ravenna
David is a tell. The new king is dressed in imperial purple, like a Roman emperor. The picture of Justinian from 3 centuries later is stylistically different - proto-Byzantine rather than provincial Hellenism - but shows the lasting connection between purple and Imperial power. The royal purple of the Western nations is a legacy of this.
The other people in the Dura fresco have generically Eastern features, but Roman togas and style. These people were thoroughly Romanized, meaning they visualized themselves through a Roman lens. The improbable appearance of pictures in a synagogue is empirical evidence of how powerful and pervasive the visual culture of Rome was. We can see it.
The appearance of Christian art in Rome is a prototype for how Christianity and the Classical heritage was adapted by the material cultures of the European nations. These first two pillars combine on the abstract level, with classical logos providing a coherent form for Christian theology. The nations combine with this abstract antique legacy on the material level, through the cumulative accumulation of subjective decisions. We're not trapped in Flatland, so the idea that different modes of knowledge apply to different ontological levels is obvious. We don't look for the universal master narrative when examining material manifestations of abstract concepts - we consider them empirically.
Last Supper, 2nd century, fresco, Catacombs of Domitilla, Rome
Jesus enthroned with the Apostles, 4th century, fresco, Catacombs of Domitilla, Rome
The top is a very early Christian image with a youthful Hellenistic Christ. Everyone is wearing Roman clothing, but Jesus is distinguished by his longer, curly, hairstyle. This makes a visual connection to images of Apollo, and tells us that the artists were looking for familiar ways to depict this unique figure. The resemblance to Apollo singles him out as divine in ways Romans could understand.
The other one is later, and depicts Jesus in more imperial terms. He is still young and beardless, but shown more like an emperor than a god. The sketchy Hellenistic style hasn't changed, suggesting continuity over the two centuries between them.
The Bosio graffiti was left by Antonio Bosio, the 16th century historian who rediscovered this catacomb.
This was Roman people looking to represent a new religious perspective visually, in keeping with the visual orientation of their culture. But they didn't have anything in their artistic or cultural tradition to depict a monotheistic deity in human form. For this reason, early Christian art is very experimental - old motifs tried out in a totally new context.
Christus-Helios (Christ as the Sun), 3rd century, vault mosaic, Mausoleum of the Julii, Grotte Vaticane, Rome
The idea of representing the divinity of Jesus as a sun god was one early strategy. And given that the imperial cult had already adopted the Sol Invictus for the divine emperor, it also points to the politicization of the religion once the empire became officially Christian.
The imperial Jesus reflects the emperors' claims to rule as a Neoplatonic image of God on earth. There are a lot of images in the 4th and after that depict Jesus as an imperial figure.
Christ enthroned between St Vitalis and Bishop Ecclesius, around 547, apse mosaic, San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy
Like this mosaic from the same church as the Justinian scene above. The youthful Jesus holds a scroll with seven seals, and sits on the world to represent the second coming. But he is dressed in the imperial purple and the saints and angels an emperor's court.
The Good Shepherd, mid-3rd century, fresco, Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome
The Good Shepherd is another pagan figure pressed into Christian duty. The protective connotations of this bucolic type was a perfect fit with the Biblical references to the flock. This figure is quite good quality.
Santa Maria Antiqua Sarcophagus, around 275, Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome
Christian sarcophagi are almost as old as the catacomb paintings, and the same experimental symbolism appears. Here we have a philosopher figure - another image adapted to Jesus - between a Good Shepherd and an orant raising her hands in the early Christian prayer gesture. On either ends are Old Testament stories that prefigured Christ's resurrection: Jonah and the Whale and Abraham and Isaac.
Note how Jonah is a Classical reclining nude, looking more River God than prophet. You can actually see pieces of Roman culture being reworked for Christian themes.
The development of Christian art is such a good illustration of how abstract concepts take form because it was an organic reaction to a new religion. The image-using Roman Christians are expressing faith in the same Logos as the non-image-using Christians of apostolic times - they just do so in culturally-specific ways. Or as the 4th-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea put it:
Eventually the elites will take over as style-setters, but even they have to work with the visual language that they were given. These pictures aren't making a philosophical argument. Nor were they imposed top-down by religious authorities - Christian art initiated with the public while the official dogmas and hierarchy were still forming. By the time the Church was in a position to deal with it in a systematic way, art was already well-established as a means to teach, inspire, and mark identity. The efforts of the theologians can be summed up as figuring out how to keep the rhetorical appeal of imagery while steering clear of idolatry.
Francisco de Goya, St. Gregory the Great, c. 1797, oil on canvas, Museo Romántico, Madrid
Or take it from Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-604), last of the Western Fathers of the Church and the preeminent authority on religious imagery in Western Christendom:
The artists and clients set the course until the Church got into the patronage game in a big way.
A note for retards. Roman Christians developing a visual language out of their pagan heritage is neither "cultural appropriation" nor evidence that Jesus was secretly some other occult figure. All symbolic languages come from somewhere. The art of the Christian West first appears in the Roman empire, meaning that the people who invented it had that frame of reference. Adapting old symbols to say something new is not a sign that the new thing is "the same" as the old symbol - it is saying something new in a language people will understand. Transforming old symbols was a way of holding on to certain connotations and applying them to make something unfamiliar comprehensible. It would be inane not to expect to see a new religion expressed in the language of the day.
It's what cultures do.
Chi-Rho page, Book of Kells, folio 114v, 9th century, Trinity College, Dublin
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