Mysticism and Moral Reality

It’s one thing for me to teach Biblical Law, offering it as the ideal for human existence. It’s quite a different thing for me to suggest choices we might make in the current context. And it is yet again something different when I offer an analysis of what Americans in general should do. I can hold forth Noah’s Covenant as a standard for all of humanity, but if someone wants my political advice, it assumes my audience won’t give a rat’s ass for holiness.

This what we mean by quantum moral reasoning: It meets your question on multiple levels, and depends entirely on who is asking and why. Don’t throw pearls to pigs. Hogs get slop and jewelers get your pearls.

So, for example I can tell you that the Civil Rights Movement in the US was totally wrong-headed. You cannot legislate racial harmony; it’s a cultural issue. Culture does not respond to legal force; it resists and finds a hundred ways around law. You cannot change culture by changing outcomes. Scolding accomplishes little, and even that little is of no long term value. Racism is rooted in Anglo-Saxon culture. It’s also rooted in most other cultures, but Anglo-Saxons raised it to a high art. And for this discussion, it has nothing to do with “whiteness” because that’s a bogus, meaningless term. Call it what it is. So we have a huge mess of laws that only complicate racial tensions and make them worse.

By the same token, I’m not going to suggest abrogating those laws. The people who stand in support of those laws belong to a different culture and you can’t simply force them to behave, any more than they could force anyone else to behave. The culture behind Civil Rights is just as evil and immoral as the folks who still stand behind Anglo-Saxon racist culture. If you want to wipe out either brand of injustice, you’ll have to slaughter an awfully large number of people. That’s the facts.

Instead, I would suggest the most likely practical solution is geographical separation. You can imagine how that will go over with most Americans. Even those few who support such a thing are clueless about how and why it could work. But the massive chasm between two distinct mainstream cultures is too far to cross; there is no bridge possible. The only way to avoid slaughter is to divide the spoils and recognize that chasm by giving it a physical manifestation. Notice that it doesn’t require racial separation, but cultural separation. Racism — whatever you imagine that to be — will take care of itself later.

Actually there are multiple sub-cultures at play here, but most of them can find a place to live peacefully in one or other other primary division.

At any rate, it won’t happen peacefully. It may happen after some serious bloodshed between the two primary groups; I suspect there will be an eventual split into two or more countries here in America. There is a tremendous inertia at play over where each group will reside and that won’t be settled without serious conflict. Neat geographical borders won’t arise without the forced removal of the folks who can’t stay on the land the other group owns. Still, to you and I as members of Kiln of the Soul, we should expect to witness a civil war of sorts to crystallize this divide. The Civil Rights Movement is just an example of what has driven us apart.

Just as a practical matter, I suspect those who most support the concept of Civil Rights will end up a far smaller minority who get pushed into smaller geographical share. Meanwhile, there will be no clean break, just an exodus with agitators left in the mix on both sides. For now, I rather expect some portion of each coast to become two (or more) smaller countries, with the bulk of what’s left keeping some modified version of the traditional American identity.

There are plenty of things I can support on the grounds that it’s the best you can do with the context. I reject the notion that an ideal situation is possible. God warned us to avoid thinking in those terms. He told is to understand things as best we can with His help and discern your best choices for His glory. Often that would mean physically engaging something you don’t really agree with deep inside, but you know it’s where God wants you despite that.