The Shifting Locus of Morality： Secular vs Spiritual
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the shift of the locus of morality from the spiritual world of the church into the secular world of government and society, and how to find a good woman in today's culture.
Transcript
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So this video is about the shift of the locus of morality from the spiritual world of the
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church into the temporal world, the secular world of government and society.
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Now it's part of a requested video, which is going to be two parts.
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The second one is going to be more directly addressing how to find a good woman, how to
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But I need to set the groundwork for all of this, which is what this video is all about.
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Because the standout thing of Western civilization, of Christendom, the reason that Christianity
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creates such advanced societies, it all boils down to the separation of church and state.
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Now this was formalized in the formation of the U.S. government, but this is a long-standing
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Since the inception, since the Roman emperors first converted to Christianity, there's been
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this divide between the world of politics and business, the marketplace, as they used
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to call it, and the world of philosophy, theology, morality, beauty, and valuation.
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And it was the separation of the two that allowed Christian societies, not just in Europe, but
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in Africa, in parts of Asia, to absolutely thrive compared to their neighbors.
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And here's what it comes down to, is that the church is talking about absolutes.
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The study of theology, the study of science, which is what theology leads to, these are about
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studying absolute quantities, perfections, mathematical forms.
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And so the Catholic Church, when you examine the Catechism, it is speaking about the perfected
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form of morality, at least as best as we've managed to figure out so far.
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Whereas the world of politics, of business, the world of the marketplace, is not about perfection
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I forget who it was that said this, but there's a great point made that I read ages ago, that
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men of good character, honest temperament, and even the same education can have disagreements
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You can, in a business, businesses will disagree as to what the best new product is.
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Because the world of politics, the world of business, of entrepreneurship, there are too
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The same thing with the study of history, or the study of art.
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We can't predict what the next great business idea is going to be, or what the next great
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We can't know that thing until it's been created.
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You can't see what would have happened if the other person had got elected, if we'd chosen
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that other policy, if we'd gone for this marketing campaign instead of that marketing campaign.
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So the world of politics, the world of the marketplace, it is a world of relative opinion.
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We all try and make the best decisions we can based upon the past when it comes to that,
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but we don't really know what's going to happen with any of these decisions.
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So men of good character can disagree on politics.
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When it comes to absolutes, though, there's no disagreement to be had on something like
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mathematics, on an objective scientific test, experiment, on derived principles.
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They're idealized forms of what morality should be, how we should behave, how we should interact.
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And so the church holds these things up as these ideals to strive towards.
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And we're all going to falter, but we get back up and we keep striving towards them.
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And this is what made Western civilization stand apart.
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If you look at something like the Islamic system, where God constantly plays dice, the Islamic
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God is capricious, changes his opinion, messes with your head, lies to you, and so you're
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not going to get any sort of scientific method deriving from that.
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And the same thing, the holiest person is the one with the biggest club.
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If you look at Chinese civilization, which was absolutely one of the great civilizations out
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there, but again, they had this unification of valuation of morality and of the state.
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Because the entire system, well, it was the state, the government, the civilization, it
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The imperial schools, the imperial exam, was the only thing that mattered for your station
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If you want to advance forward in life, you had to score high on the exam, on the imperial
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Everybody, you know, they could afford it, and it actually wasn't that expensive even.
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But then, because you're defining what is good by what the exam is, you are predicting,
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You have an established institution, a system in place that is not going to change.
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Whereas in Western civilization, we had the politics of the day, and we had the church
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You know, we didn't pretend that the king, the king was the most important layman in the
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church, but he was still a layman in the church.
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But it doesn't change the valuation of morality.
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Whereas what we've done over the past couple hundred years is that the system of valuation,
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our locus of morality, has gone from the church into the secular world.
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So ironically enough, we actually have the exact opposite now.
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It used to be that the church was where you got your sense of meaning, your identity, it
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Whereas the politics, that's like your opinion, man.
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These days, we are deriving our identity, our morality, and our sense of valuation from
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And your religion, like, that's just your opinion, man.
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And the problem is that most Westerners, most Christians, even traditionalist Christians, embrace
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So your identity, your sense of meaning, whether you're libertarian, republican, or democrat,
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you know, this defines your absolutist worldview.
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Even though politics is constantly shifting, this defines your worldview.
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And as numerous people have pointed out in the alternative right and the alt-media, the definition of the good life keeps shifting.
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You know, a Republican would have been a Democrat 20 years ago.
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And with the recent nonsense with Bill Nye, you can see him shifting his opinion as to what genes are, as to what sex is.
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He's shifting his opinion like a rudderless ship in a storm.
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Whereas the religious aspects become more and more about the rituals, the tradition of it all.
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And so even the deeply religious person is still, because this is the reality.
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This is what the world is made up of right now.
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They are getting their valuation from their politics.
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So the ritual, that's just like your opinion, man.
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But the sense of valuation comes from the political sphere.
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So it's actually the Republican Party that is behind morality.
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Not the church, even though most traditional churches are going to be more Republican-leaning.
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It's actually the Republican Party where the values are coming from.
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And the secular morality that we have right now is a very effeminate morality.
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Effeminate, as in it decries male sins while ignoring female sins.
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And so, you know, think about any lecture you've heard at church.
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Think about what sins are focused on in churches, even in the most traditional churches.
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You know, that's another thing we don't like in our society.
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And hate speech or rude speech that offends somebody.
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You know, getting hot under the collar and starting a fight for the wrong reason.
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And telling people like it is, even when you're not being particularly polite or civil or gentlemanly.
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These are the sort of sins that men are more prone to than women.
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And it's important to remember that there's a case of having the virtues of your vices.
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Somebody that gets hot under the collar too often gets into fights.
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But it's better than being a milquetoast that can't even defend your family if you have a home invasion.
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Part of being a man is being aggressive at the correct times.
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And so the guy that gets too hot under the collar, he's being aggressive at the wrong times.
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He is going to protect his family when the chips are down.
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These are the sins that are connected to virtues.
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And very frequently in the church we talk about all of this.
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And you've got something like gossip is a great example.
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As in, it's a sort of dishonesty and immoral behavior that drives people away from the truth.
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And yet we have, anytime you go to the grocery store,
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Vanity tends to be more of a female sin than a male sin.
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And you will very seldom hear vanity talked about in the churches.
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The way we approach it is, we, we punish the men.
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We blame the men for pursuing women, for sleeping around, etc.
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When the irony being, a guy that can get away with sleeping around,
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he's doing that because he's displaying a lot of male virtue in other areas,
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even though he's being intemperate with his sexuality.
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and there are going to be two aisles full of romance novels.
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And the, the false narrative being pushed forth by those romance novels
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are just as false as the false narrative being pushed by pornography.
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To put simply, you know, the narrative of pornography that,
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oh, there's just this fun-time girl, she doesn't want any commitment,
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If a woman's offering that, she has an ulterior motive.
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or because she's emotionally intemperate and will lash out at you the next day.
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the, the woman can capture the bad boy and tame him.
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whether it's a steel magnet, like in Fifty Shades of Grey.
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She can capture him and subdue him and punish him.
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And by the way, that is the narrative of all three Fifty Shades of Grey books.
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And our secular civilization has become a very, very effeminate one.
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So we punish the male sins that are connected to male virtues,
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while ignoring and encouraging the female sins of gossip, vanity,
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is that one of the consistent themes throughout the New Testament
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is that the Pharisees were engaging in all of the trappings of religion,
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while completely ignoring the spirit of the law.
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and this is not just from the person requesting this video,
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This is happening throughout traditional circles.
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Because our locus of morality is rooted in the secular world.
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And the secular world is fundamentally a variable one.
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you are going to find that it's people obeying,
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but getting their morality from somewhere else entirely.
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So when it comes to finding people of good character,
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if you're looking for a wife of good character,
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this isn't to say you shouldn't look for her in the church,
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And I'd like to think there's more of those people