Those who have read my 2011 book Thought Prison (linked in the sidebar) will know that this was my conclusion some fifteen years ago: that either the West went back to a (more or less) zero growth (minimal innovation) society based on agriculture on the model of Catholic Monarchy, or else civilizational extinction loomed.
At the time, I regarded Catholic Monarchy as a genuine possibility, but could not happen unless there was first a spiritual and religious awakening. In other words, we could not "use" religious as a means to the end of Catholic monarchy - the Catholic must come first, and for its own sake; and then monarchy would naturally evolve.
And I regarded this as very, very unlikely - but possible, and therefore it was what I worked and hoped for.
However; I have since come to believe that Catholic Monarchy is not just very unlikely, but actually impossible.
It will not happen because it cannot happen.
The reason that I believe it cannot happen is that I have come to believe that the cultural change by which Catholic Monarchy disappeared everywhere, was caused by changes in human consciousness; by species wide (although with different rates among different peoples) one-way changes in the way that Men perceive, understand, think, reason, relate to the world - changes in instincts and intuitions.
And because Men are so very different, no society of the past can be recreated.
In the first place, modern Men don't want it, and cannot be made to want it - at least not want it enough to create and sustain it.
(Idealistic Daydreams don't suffice.)
Even if (for the sake of argument) the formal structure of Catholic Monarchy was (somehow) fully re-imposed on a Western nation - because the "ingredients" (individual Men) have changed, the societal-"recipe" would yield a different outcome.
If you ask me: If not, then what? If I say that Catholic Monarchy cannot happen, then what do I suggest instead as a way of saving the West?
To which my answer is simply that the West cannot be saved: firstly because it does not want to be saved, indeed wants to kill itself.
But secondly because - as far as I can see - the number and severity of interacting problems make an end inevitable. These are indeed the End Times.
Therefore; I regard the question of how to save the West as rooted in false assumptions; the proper question is individual not societal; how to save our-selves and those we love - and I mean "save" spiritually, not physically - regardless of our situation, regardless of how bad it is.
We can do little physically except delay inevitabilities (although plenty of people delude themselves otherwise, and defend their delusions with hysterical aggression!); when caught-up in major civilizational changes such as wars, famines, (real) epidemics, mass poisonings, social breakdown etc.
But, if we recognize the nature of the changes of consciousness, we can see that the same changes that have made Catholic Monarchy impossible, are also the same changes that make it possible for anybody and everybody in all possible circumstances to know and follow Jesus Christ...
To live and learn with loving creativity; and at the end of mortal life, to do what is necessary for us accept the gift of resurrected eternal life.
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