Individualism Is Death

Mr Tim Kirby has written an excellent essay that is rather like a skeleton key for unlocking the mystery behind the moral collapse of the West. He says, in part,

‘Complaining about the “degradation” of society gets louder with each year as the average Western man becomes more depressed, sexless, drug addicted, emasculated, jobless, debt ridden and utterly hopeless. The response to this steady decay over the decades following WWII has mostly been a lot of finger wagging. Those that want to save the West are very good at pointing out all the bad things that are happening, but their attempts to beg or guilt trip the next generation into holding on to traditions with no system of apologetics to explain them is completely futile.

‘The ultimate reason why Conservatives, Traditionalists (Western TradCons), Republicans, the Alt-Right, the Red Pill, Team Trump and so on continue to lose is that they firmly believe in the idea that the individual is sacred and that no government, and to a greater extent no one, should tell this blessed individual what to do. Yet this same group is eternally surprised that raising people in a system that can never tell them “no” turns society into spoiled narcissistic hedonistic adult children.

‘ . . .

‘The broad spectrum of pro-Western political viewpoints mentioned above is stuck in a death cycle of clinging to its Liberalism constantly yet howling about the negative consequences of it. They cry about falling birthrates and the death of the family and yet generally advocate for living for yourself and building a career or not taking the risk on marriage after all “she could take half your stuff”. They want people to make sacrifices for their nation in spite of all of us being indoctrinated into a cult of Hedonism and “looking out for #1”. They want women to be feminine and men to be masculine, which are ideals to strive for that serve little purpose when you spend your adult life alone in your one-bedroom apartment, and when there is no means of enforcing any standard onto people in the first place. This group complains about the rampant narcissism in society but makes it clear that no one can tell anyone what to do. The “solution” to everything of adding more Liberalism is really the cause of our suffering.

‘No attempts to save culture, the family, traditional gender roles or anything else sane will work when we live by an insane premise, that society is made great via Individualism. Culture, patriotism, family, traditional gender roles, etc. are all concepts founded in the idea of contributing in or belonging to a group. Rampant “me culture” was the poison to society that all of our traditional religions fought to keep in check for the future of humanity, but since religion is now a personal choice they have essentially lost that war forever.

‘ . . .

‘To the extent that the medieval peasant needed a shot of Individualism to rise from his meaningless cycle of existence, the Postmodern man needs a shot of the traditional values that kept the peasant working in the fields – productive, masculine, loyal, married with children and filled with ideas of something greater than himself perhaps worth sacrificing for. If the Right in the West does not answer the call to some level of Illiberalism, it will fade away into the night wrapped in a warm blanket of smug self-assuredness that the Individual is the Alpha and the Omega.’

Mr Rod Dreher adds a further dimension to this critique of Western individualism in an essay on the book The WEIRDest People in the World by Joe Henrich:

‘It’s a big book, so I’ll try to boil it down. Its basic argument is that the medieval Church in the West, separated de facto from the Eastern Church by the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, orchestrated a cultural revolution in western Europe by changing marriage laws and customs. It broke up the tight kinship forms of family that were traditional in barbarian cultures that had just converted to Christianity — forms that persisted in most of the rest of the world (even in Byzantine lands; the Orthodox Church, says Henrich, was slower and less forceful about changing these patterns). The Latin church’s breaking up of strong kinship networks shifted psychological patterns in ways that led to the development of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) psychology.

‘A simplified version of the argument goes like this: the Latin church broke up kinship networks, which had practical social effects resulting over time in a more individualistic way of thinking. Around the year 1000, an alien looking at earth from orbit would have imagined that Chinese or Islamic civilization would dominate the world for the next thousand years. But a big change was taking place in western Europe that would catapult Europeans over everyone else. The kinds of institutions and ways of thinking that an individualist-minded West was generating would spark a culture that eventually produced Protestantism and mass literacy, which went on to make Westerners even more innovative and materially successful, and further apart psychologically from the greater part of humanity.

‘ . . . Henrich is not saying that the WEIRD worldview grew up in opposition to Christianity. It’s rather that Christian culture manifested in different ways with kinship networks straitjacketed. For example,

‘“new monastic orders, guilds, towns, and universities increasingly built their law, principles, norms, and rules in ways that focused on the individual, often endowing each member with abstract rights, privileges, obligations, and duties to the organization. To thrive, these voluntary organizations had to attract mobile individuals and then cultivate an adherence to, and preferably an internalization of, their mutually agreed upon principles and rules.”

‘ . . .

‘One main point of the book: do not assume that Western norms are universal or superior. They are better for generating certain outcomes, but those outcomes may produce unwanted effects. For example, in an age of global capitalism, societies with intact families and rooted communities make it harder for corporations to make a profit. They need a mobile, flexible labor force. But over time, societies without intact families and rooted communities fail to produce the kind of people who have habits and norms that produce stable, healthy societies.’

One of the essential points in both of these essays is that the distortions of Christianity in the West – both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism – make those groups unable to lift the West out of the quagmire in which she finds herself at present.

It is easy to see how Protestantism contributes to this problem, with its belief about the priesthood of the believer – i.e., each individual Protestant is proclaimed to be the final judge for himself of what is true doctrine. It is a bit more complicated with the Roman Catholics, for the laymen and clergy are in submission to the Bishop of Rome, the Pope; they do not get to decide upon doctrine. The Pope himself, however, proves to be the problem in this system – a boil of individualism disfiguring the body of the West. For the Pope has made himself the sole arbiter of the Faith, breaking free of the conciliar model of decision-making of the Holy Apostles and the rest of the Orthodox Church.

Per Mr Dreher’s essay, a return to the Orthodox Church, the original church of the West, is the primary means by which the Western imbalance between the individual and the whole community will be corrected. Speaking in the context of Russia, Andrey Shirin writes,

‘In accordance with the longstanding tradition of sobornost, a “spiritual community of many jointly living people,” many Russians believe that they can only fully acquire a sense of meaning and purpose as a people, not as separate individuals. Nikolai Berdyaev, a prominent Russian Orthodox philosopher, puts it very well in his article titled The Truth of Orthodoxy. Individualism, says Berdyaev, is alien to orthodoxy. The true freedom of the Spirit is not found in the isolated, autonomous person who finds self-affirmation in individualism. Instead, this freedom is found in the person who sees herself as a part of one spiritual organism, which is the church. The heavy Western emphasis on individualism does not resonate with this quest. Of course, by and large, Russians appreciate the newfound individual freedoms and opportunities afforded by the influence of Western values. Nevertheless, to many in Russia these individual callings can find a sense of completion only in a larger communal context.

‘Additionally, this context cannot be limited to local communities, important as they are. Ultimately, it has to culminate in the Russian people as a whole. The separation of various realms of human endeavor and activity common to Western individualism does not fit in with the organic, interconnected worldview informed by Russian Orthodox spirituality.’

But this balance of community and individual is found also in the West before she fell away from the Orthodox Church. Priest-monk Ambrose (formerly Fr Alexey Young) describes the world of the Orthodox Celts – Irish, Scottish, and Welsh – prior to the Great Schism:

‘First we must realize that the Celts had no concept of privacy or individuality such as we have today. Families did not live in separate rooms, but all together; no one thought about the idea of "compartmentalizing space" and only hermits and anchorites felt a calling to be alone in spiritual solitude with God, although monks had separate cells, just as monastics did in the Egyptian Thebaid. The idea that people are separate individuals from the group was not only unheard-of, but would have been considered dangerous, even heretical. Self-absorption, "moods," and being temperamental-all of these things would have been considered abnormal and sinful. It wasn't until the 13th and 14th centuries that people in the West started keeping journals or diaries, and there were no memoirs-also signs of individuality and privacy, of singling oneself out from the family, group, or community-nor were there actual real-life portraits of individuals, until the 14th century. (The art of realistic portraiture developed in response to the medieval idea of romance-for an accurate portrait was a substitute for an absent husband or wife.)

‘Furthermore, "'the dominant institution of Celtic Christianity was neither the parish church nor the cathedral, but the monastery, which sometimes began as a solitary hermit's cell and often grew to become a combination of commune, retreat house, mission station...school [and, in general] a source not just of spiritual energy but also of hospitality, learning, and cultural enlightenment." (Ian Bradley, quoted in Mitten, Ibid.) It was only much later that people began to be gathered into separate parishes, and even later before bishops had dioceses that were based on geographical lines rather than just being the shepherd of a given tribe or group, "being bishops of a community, rather than ruling areas of land. The idea of 'ruling a diocese' was quite foreign to the Celtic way of thinking." (Ibid.)

‘If you think about what all of this means in terms of how we today view ourselves, the world in which we live, and the values that we have today, you can see how difficult it's going to be for us to enter into the world of the Celts. Today we are quite obsessive about such things as privacy and individuality, of "being our own selves" and "getting in touch with the inner man" and other such self-centered nonsense. But the Celtic Christian understood, just as did and do Eastern Christians, that man is saved in community; if he goes to hell, he goes alone.

‘So the orientation of those Christian Celts to God and the other world was very different than the orientation of our modern world, no matter how devout or pious we may be, and this makes the distance between us and the world of Celtic monasticism far greater than just the span of the centuries. A renowned scholar, Sir Samuel Dill, writing generally about Christians in the West at this same period of time, said: "The dim religious life of the early Middle Ages is severed from the modern mind by so wide a gulf, by such a revolution of beliefs that the most cultivated sympathy can only hope to revive in faint imagination ....[for it was] a world of...fervent belief which no modern man can ever fully enter into....It is intensely interesting, even fascinating...[but] between us and the early Middle Ages there is a gulf which the most supple and agile imagination can hardly hope to pass. He who has pondered most deeply over the popular faith of that time will feel most deeply how impossible it is to pierce its secret." (Quoted in "Vita Patrum", Fr. Seraphim Rose)

‘But is it really "impossible"? To enter their world-the world of Celtic Christianity, which is the same as Celtic monasticism--we must find a way to see things as they did-not as we do today-; to hear, taste, touch, pray, and think as they did. And this is what I mean by the word "spirituality"-a whole world-view. We must examine them in the full context of their actual world-which was a world of Faith, and not just any Faith, but the Christian Faith of Christians in both the Eastern and Western halves of Christendom in the first thousand years after Christ [i.e., the Faith of the Orthodox Church—W.G.]. Spirituality is living, dogmatic, theology. This is the only way we can begin to understand how Celtic Monasticism can be a model of sanctity for us living today, more than a millennium after their world ceased to be.  . . .’

One of the ways this balance between individual and community is manifested in the Orthodox Church is in the acceptance by younger, inexperienced Christians of an elder to guide them. Regarding this, the Orthodox monk Dr Gorazd offers the following:

‘In the Christian monastic tradition, the institution of spiritual Fathers and Elders existed from the earliest times. There were a number of God-bearing Elders among the Egyptian Desert Fathers, and such holy spiritual Elders can be found throughout the history of the Orthodox Church down to the present day. Celtic monasticism was also adorned by such holy spiritual guides, such as St. Columba of Iona. In the Celtic Church there existed the very important institution of spiritual Fathers, who in Ireland were called anamchara ("soul-friends," anamcara, from the Latin animae carus); in Welsh, periglour. Each monk had his spiritual guide, anamchara, to whom he was to open his heart, confess his thoughts, and reveal his conscience (manifestatio conscientiae). An ancient Irish saying comments that a person without a soul-friend is like a body without a head.24 Through his writings, St. John Cassian was a teacher of spiritual life in the British Isles. He also instructs his readers concerning the benefits of revealing one’s thoughts to the Fathers, though not indiscriminately. (One should, he says, consult spiritual Elders who have spiritual discernment [diakrisis].) In the Life of St. David of Wales we find additional evidence of the practice of the confession of thoughts. In §28, it is recorded that the monks in St. David’s monastery revealed their thoughts to the spiritual Father.25

‘I.M. Kontzevitch has left an account of his visits to the Optina Hermitage in pre-Revolutionary Russia, where Elder Anatoly (Potapov) heard the monks’ confessions of thoughts. He describes the impressive scene of the concentration and reverence with which the monks, one after another, would approach the Elder, kneel, receive his blessing, exchange a few short sentences with him, and leave calm and consoled. This happened twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. Thus, life in Optina was truly without grief and all the monks were kind, joyful, and concentrated, immersed within themselves.26 Here we see that the same practice that was followed in the monasteries of Wales in the sixth century was in use in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The efficacy of this universally applied custom is captured in a Celtic proverb: "As the floor is swept every day, so is the soul cleansed every day by confession."

‘The Celtic spiritual Fathers helped and counselled not only monks, but also the lay people who had recourse to them. The soul-friend was to be a guide who helped in all the trials and difficulties of spiritual life. The purpose of this revelation of conscience was to heal the wounds inflicted by sin and enable one to continue his path to unification with God. A truly wise soul-friend was one who had learned humility. Everyone was recommended to choose a humble and experienced soul-friend.27 . . .’

Let us speak briefly now of the consequences of the different worldviews of the Orthodox and the post-Orthodox confessions of the West. The newly canonized Orthodox Saint, Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, is associated strongly with a patristic maxim: ‘Obedience is life; disobedience is death’ (Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi, Obedience Is Life: Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, The Holy Great Monastery of Vatopaidi, Mount Athos, 2003, p. 19). Politically, this manifests itself in monarchies, or aristocracies at the very least. But restless, rebellious individualism finds its expression in the electoral mechanisms of republics and democracies.

The perceptive modern Spanish statesman, Juan Donoso Cortes, expresses this plainly in a speech to the Spanish Parliament given on 30 January 1850, in which he explains why France has a republican form of government rather than a monarchy:

‘The Republic exists in France, and the Republic will continue to exist in France, because the Republic is the necessary form of government for people who are ungovernable.

‘In the nations which are ungovernable, the government necessarily takes republican forms’ (Donoso Cortes: Readings in Political Theory, Herrera, edr., McNamara & Schwartz, trans., Sapientia Press, Ave Maria, Florida, 2007, pgs. 67, 73).

The same thing is playing out in modern Russia:

‘According to historian Alexander Chausov, “the practical implementation of the idea of the revival of the Russian monarchy seems extremely doubtful. In modern times, the return of the monarchy to any country entails a change in the entire logic of the work of the institutions of power. Even if it is a constitutional monarchy. No matter how we relate to Russia, it is today a democratic republican state,” – says Alexander Chausov.

‘The historian believes that religion in any monarchy is an essential component. Monarchy is the legitimization of power through the sacred, that is, through religious attributes. How in Russia, where freedom of conscience and religion is declared at the constitutional level with the legally enshrined equality of confessions and religious movements, will they choose the religious denomination that should perform the rite of anointing this particular monarch? It is clear that Russia is a country with an strong Orthodox culture, and George Romanov himself is Orthodox. But if the ceremony is performed by the Russian Orthodox Church, not only will it cause dissatisfaction with other religious confessions, but also with political factions [the Communist Party in particular] of the country. “The tsar in the state is the bishop for earthly affairs, as the Byzantine emperors were called. When introducing a monarchy, one will have to forget that in Russia the church is separated from the state,” noted Chausov.

‘In addition, the historian is sure that for the revival of the monarchy in Russia, it will be necessary to return the class division of society. In order to establish a monarchy in Russia, it is necessary to hold a nationwide referendum. If the absolute majority votes in favor, it will be necessary to hold a certain Zemsky Sobor – by analogy with the one at which Mikhail Romanov was elected tsar in Russia in 1613 . Now the right of the descendants of the Kirillovich branch of the Romanov family to occupy any throne seems very doubtful. But the Zemsky Sobor is not a referendum; it presupposes, at least, the division of the estate of society and the official revival of the nobility. Modern society is simply not motivated by the processes of the revival of the monarchy, the historian is sure.

‘The idea of restoring monarchy in post-Soviet Russia is not popular with most Russians. In the summer of 2019, a poll conducted by REGNUM of some 35,000 Russian citizens showed that only 28% supported the idea of restoring the monarchy, more than half (52%) of which would NOT support placing a “Romanov” on the throne!’

--Paul Gilbert

A pillar of the Orthodox Church in Russia today, Fr Job Gumerov, shows how dangerous such pro-democratic/republican opinions are:

‘—Fr. Job, in your view, is there a direct link between the people’s betrayal of the tsar and their falling away from the Church following the arrest of Nicholas II and his martyrdom at the Ipatiev House?

‘—The link between renouncing the sovereign and renouncing Orthodoxy, faith, and the Church is indubitable. Christian statehood was first instituted by the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine. This is what Venerable Theodore the Studite wrote to Emperor Nicephoros in 806: “These two gifts God gave to the Christians: the priesthood and the kingdom. Both of them heal and adorn things on earth as well as in heaven. So, if one of these becomes unworthy, then everything is exposed to peril.” (Epistle no. 16)

‘During the ceremony of coronation of an Orthodox tsar, his regalia is solemnly bestowed upon him. He is also anointed with holy myrrh and thus receives the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This is why regicide is not only a felony but also a grave spiritual crime, which, as a rule, brings great troubles upon a country. The severity and duration of these troubles depends upon the whole nation’s attitude towards this crime—for not only those who committed it are responsible for it, but also those who supported it morally. The aftereffects also correlate directly to the foundation upon which the subsequent life of the society is built: whether these are the very spiritual and moral principles the righteous monarch lived by or those introduced in the country by the regicides. This is what St. John of Shanghai said about the relationship between the regicide of Nicholas II and mass apostasy and abandonment of the Church:

‘ “He was a living incarnation of faith in the Divine Providence that works in the destinies of nations and peoples and directs rulers faithful to God into good and useful actions. Therefore, he was intolerable for the enemies of the faith and for those who strive to place human reason and human faculties above everything…Tsar Nicholas II was a servant of God by his inner world-outlook, by conviction, by his actions; and he was thus in the eyes of the whole Orthodox Russian people. The battle against him was closely bound up with the battle against God and faith. In a word, he became a Martyr, having remained faithful to the Ruler of those who rule, and accepted death in the same way as the martyrs accepted it.[3]” ’

What Fr Job says here and elsewhere in his interview is true not just for Russia but for any people who opposes their lawful, anointed king: They are fighting against God, healthy traditions, and so on; the origin of their anti-monarchical ideologies is demonic in origin; without repentance, these rebellions end in disaster.

In short, one of the ways we will know that the peoples of the world are healing from their unhealthy obsession with individualism is by their friendliness towards sacred, Orthodox kingship.