I see here and there various theories of history of philosophy, where one traces the "woke left who have gone crazy"™ as a historical offshoot of Christianity - “it’s like a religion”, don’t you know. Moldbug famously, and lesser creatures like the guy who rose to prominence by sending Mein Kampf to a feminist journal, I forget his name, the guy with the Chinese sword. I would like, in a general way and not in response to anyone in particular, to respond to these accusations, first, in the Christian tradition, with a parable I like to call “The Man who Had a Job”.
For the past months I've had a wonky schedule at my wageslave job, where couple of weeks, I have a run of 4 days off from work in a row, Friday through Monday. Every single following Tuesday, I am met by a certain superior, who complains and reprimands me that everything is a mess, and that I am not keeping the kitchen in order. When I work 6 days in a row, this never happens. When I'm gone for more than 2, and someone else is working my shifts, everything starts to fall apart.
Stupid people who can't think very far ahead just notice something is wrong, and without a desire to solve the problem, but just rent seek and cover their own ass, absentmindedly just pass the hot potato, and lash out at the easiest target: because I make an effort to be somewhat professional and not immature enough that I start throwing a tantrum when I get negative feedback, unlike most other people I work with. And then they just kind of hope the problem magically goes away. We go through the same conversation every time. It is not a miscalculation of reason, where he reasons wrong and fails to solve the case, but a total absence of deduction, and just a vague “something is wrong, and you were the first guy I saw”, with no deeper thought - or, importantly, care - than that.
Accusing a causal effect to a result that is caused by an absence. Or at least correlates 100% with an absence, rather than with a presence. Because it is cognitively convenient, and does cause an immediate physical conflict, because I don’t lose my temper and throw knives at him, he just relieves his own emotional frustration, with no concern as to solving the deeper issue, because really, he doesn’t really care enough about the problem, and is not intelligent enough to solve the case even if he did.
The supposed tracing of the Christian heritage of the woke left™ is always through nominal "Christianity" - but never back to Christ himself. Specific protestant offshoots usually. It is explicitly everything surrounding, everything after -“Christian metaphysics, Christian morality, etc - that supposedly have lead to the new “religious madness”. It’s never that Christ has informed this later development, it’s never fully traced all the way, only to the Christians. There is no Christology in this analysis. I j’accuse that this is not an accident, and the crucial mistake.
These nominally Christian traditions and so on, are explicitly post-Christian, in which, on a psychological level it operates in a sense of "insofar as Christ is true, real, genuine, etc, he is so by accident" - Christ is arbitrary, not purposeful, not a deliberate act of will by God/act of God. Because this is the only way most people are capable of approaching the subject, today. “I can entertain the idea maybe that they got something right, by accident”. The premise that certain parts of the christian heritage are good or useful, because it happens to fit a "deeper" or “more real” pattern: of Jungian archetypes, or perennialism, or Nietzschean truths, etc. A Christianity without Christ, without Christ as the central focal point, or the deepest truth.
I think it is unreasonable to call such a thing Christianity. At the very least, it’s confusing and unclear language, to call something by the name of something that is at best accidental to it.
The accusations are exactly not that such people, as the woke left™, are too Christlike, but rather that they are duplicitous, worldly, and insincere. The implicit assumption is that they only pretend to believe, to achieve their various worldly ends.
There is no compromise in Christ, all compromise is rejection. If Christ is not unique, he is not Christ, and all his teaching is sullied, and there is nothing in the "Christian tradition" worth preserving, because it is all false - there is then no use for a cultural Christianity, the Christianity without Christ, in the first place. Yet you do not see anyone who dares ask to do away with it in its entirety: pagans, satanists, muslims - all want to harvest the fruits of the Christian world, to inherit it and replace it. To have Christianity without Christ.
Thus, since the heritage that is traced is defined explicitly by the absence of Christ, then, absent all moral judgement and any further symbolic inference, on a strictly formal level, it would be more coherent and appropriate to call it antichrist.
Thank you to my generous supporters, I feel like im always begging and never saying thank you.
This is a beautiful piece of writing.
Moldbug is the boss and Christianity is showing up to work and getting blamed for someone else's mess. Sharp.
I will add that I found the digging and energy over desiring to name the thing and it's ideological pedigree perfectly a waste of time:
https://silentsod.substack.com/p/spiritual-enslavement