I initially thought I responded to EOW Kirkegaard, but in fact I’m after Academic Agent—the name doesn’t matter for the argument’s sake. AA argues in a recent Substax post that race is infinitely more important than religion. In essence, whatever religion is in power race ticks on as ever—and it follows, so says AA, that religious orientation is not an important factor in the decline of nations (or, presumably, in their rise). Whatever the state religion says, the tribe does what it always does.
I refute AA with the picture above: the picture above shows the difference religion makes to a nation. The Koreas—DPRK and ROK—are composed from exactly the same race, yet one country is an underdeveloped hellhole and the other has K-Pop (underdeveloped in one sense, very developed in another). The difference? Religion. The DPRK is legitimised by the Juche ideology—Communist nationalism—while the ROK subscribes to liberal democracy (aka progressivism). One has lights, the other does not—and the difference is down to religion (both peoples have the same intelligence levels and the same general disposition). Religion is very important—although it will inevitably be interpreted in line with the blood, so that Juche is not like Soviet Communism and South Korea has peculiar quasi-mechanical “mass dance” events (for corporations, not the ruling party) because Koreans, in the blood, love highly disciplined robotic activities.
“Never talk about religion and politics,” say, well, say politically adroit people—not a way to make friends, you know. Actually, religion and politics are the same thing; it is only because America dominates the world and the Founding Fathers suffered from the delusion that they had “seperated church and state” that we think that “religion and politics” are different things today—really, they are synonymous (and gestalt with the blood).
Further, AA contradicts himself; he speaks about Islam in Europe as a single homogeneous entity, yet per his interpretation it should be a melange of races: the Turkish barbers I see on my high street should have nothing in common with the Pakistani restaurant owner, if AA is correct. Hence, to follow through, “Islam” is not threat to Europe, since it is too racially heterogeneous to be a threat to anyone; and, oddly, this replicates the left’s argument “you can’t generalise about Muslims, Islam is too heterogenous to generalise—especially with the various migrant communities in Europe”. AA further contradicts himself when he moves on to discuss American Christianity, for he discusses the differences between sects (particularly with reference to Israel)—yet surely, by his own logic, the differences between the sects are irrelevant, since only race is important. Blood is thicker than water, yet beliefs are not water.
You can see how important ideas—beliefs—are if you follow the Ukraine War. Look at the Azov formation and its plucky holdout in the Azovstal steelworks. Leave aside for a moment Azov’s ideology—the bizarre fact that avowed Hitlerites serve a Jewish premier—and consider how this small unit has dominated the coverage of the Ukraine War and has participated in the definitive action of the war so far. They demonstrated genuine heroism—since I am not an ideologist I will credit heroism wherever I see it, whether demonstrated by Russians or “Ukrainian Nazis”. Heroism is heroism—life is life.
Why have they taken the lead? Because they are men motivated—highly motivated—by a common belief. Whether that belief is retarded or evil we will not consider here, what we can say is that it has led to acts of heroism and high levels of unit effectiveness—it is unusual, hence very elitist. Other Ukrainians of the same race yet without the same belief have not distinguished themselves to the same extent. Man does not live by bread alone (Bible)—and man does not live by blood alone either (though that is not to say blood is not very, very important).
A highly motivated man is a more valuable soldier: he is a man who knows what he fights for and why; and you foster that outlook through beliefs, values, and—essentially—through religion. It follows that religion is of the utmost importance as regards the rise and fall of nations. Why would an atheist or agnostic fight to defend his country? Surely, it makes no difference one way or another—per Lucretius and De Rerum Natura it is all “the confusion of atoms and darkness”? If that is how it will be, I’ll settle for a raspberry vape and a tab of Prozac.
The problem with men like AA and their gene frequency tables is that nobody ever died for a gene frequency table—many men have died for an idea (or, better yet, for an idea instantiated in a man—as the Arabs had Mohammad, the “prophet armed” of their own blood). To look at the world through the lens of evolutionary psychology and Darwinism is itself decadent and nihilistic; it is a purely materialist and quantitative mode of analysis—yet war is psychological and politics is war without the kinetic factor. As any leftist—any reasonable person—will tell you, if you trace all these genes back through the charts it all mixes together in the end to some common ancestor, some “African Eve” (scientists hate God and so cannot help parodying religious stories).
So why bother—ultimately, we’re all genetically of a common descent, right? One race, the human race—the scientific conclusion, the Darwinian conclusion (the valueless conclusion). It is only when you reinject the qualitative element that you begin to live—to fight to live. Now, there may be some religious ideas that are more isomorphic with what we feel in the blood, others less so—yet that does not diminish the spiritual element. Really, AA knows all this is so; he is just being tendentious because he exoterically adopts the high-status scientific approach—yet inside he knows science only offers hypotheses, not truth; and people die for truth.