Trevor Lynch's Review of FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD(1967) Ignites Richard Spencer vs Greg Johnson Pt II

https://www.counter-currents.com/2019/04/far-from-the-madding-crowd/

The review by Trevor Lynch(Greg Johnson?) is useful as social commentary, sexual politics, and moral judgement, but it mostly overlooks the most important facet of Art. The element of psychology. The best works of art are more about empathy(not to be confused with blind sympathy) and understanding. So, we can believe the characters are acting foolishly or even evil and recognize the ridiculousness of motivations and actions(and the foolishness or injustice of the community as a whole), but art delivers something more than a sermon, lecture, analysis, or diagnosis. Rather, it allows us to empathize and see/feel through the characters and identify with them on some level EVEN IF we disagree with them or loathe them. Oliver Stone has been an uneven director and brazen ideologue, but some of his films can be appreciated as art because his objective was to penetrate and understand. Stone, no fan of Tricky Dick, made a thoughtful political film with NIXON, something he utterly failed with the breathless propagandizing of JFK.

Lynch's Counter-Currents movie reviews too often read like right-wing versions of Proggy treatment of culture. If the 'left' hailed the New STAR WARS because it's Diverse and Multi-Culti(even though it is dreadful), Lynch praised JURASSIC WORLD because it is ostensibly a 'white' movie(even though it too is dreadful by any aesthetic or emotional standard). If progs too often reduce plays, novels, and movies into simple morality tales of heroes & villains and oppressors & victims, a similar ideological pall hangs over Lynch's review of MADDING CROWD. There is too much judgmentalism without any effort to understand the characters(even though I agree with much of Lynch's moral concerns and prescriptions). Now, I'm not opposed to judgement and personal disapproval in arts/culture criticism AS LONG AS there is an effort to understand the why of the characters and situations(and the artist's intentions). Take films like Martin Scorsese's MEAN STREETS and GOODFELLAS, and most of the characters range from childish to vile & disgusting. But it would be too easy to dismiss and condemn the characters for being a bunch of 'goombas'. They are great films because they place us in that cultural-historical milieu and show why people behave as they do in it.

Lynch's review is most lacking in the treatment of Sergeant Troy(Terence Stamp). One almost gets the sense that Lynch's diatribe against Troy is Greg Johnson vs Richard Spencer II by fictional proxy. Yes, Troy is a something of a cad(at times anyway), but he is also something more, and human psychology being what it is, it is totally understandable why Bathsheba is drawn to him(and why William Boldwood[Peter Finch] and Gabriel Oak[Alan Bates] are drawn to Bathsheba in what seems like fatal attractions). Before judgement, the critic should try to empathize and understand. Of course, this applies to works of art, not propaganda. Though I'm not keen on watching homo characters(esp in multi-culti situations), a work of art can make their lives interesting. MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE is a genuine work of art. And C.R.A.Z.Y is one of the most deeply felt movies about the pangs of growing up and problems of family life. Such works deserve empathy on our part even if we may not care for homo characters or situations. On the other hand, a movie like PHILADELPHIA that features simple saints and devils doesn't deserve any such effort or respect on our part. It is stupid propaganda. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, like Terrence Malick's DAYS OF HEAVEN, is a work with characters of some depth and complexity. Reducing the story to a morality tale doesn't do it justice.

Granted, one of the problems is John Schlesinger pulled his punches in making the film. It doesn't have the auteurist stamp of DAYS OF HEAVEN or Roman Polanski's superb adaptation of TESS. Schlesinger did a very good job as professional and craftsman, but there isn't much of the director-as-author in the adaptation. Stanley Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON and Polanski's TESS are like universes unto themselves, the products of visionary power. We not only sense the keen eye but the keener intelligence, an invisible omnipotence that holds it all together. In contrast, FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD is all eyes, rather like Ang Lee's very professional version of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. Impeccably done but mostly an exterior than interior work. We see a world than enter a universe.
TESS unfolds like a dream. We don't merely witness obsessions verging on madness in the characters but sense them as mood and texture in every square inch of the frame. A genius at his best, Polanski had the keenness to pore through the hearts and minds of characters(though often for perverted purposes) and to infuse the entire setting with unloosed spirits. In works of 'horror' like REPULSION and THE TENANT, he blatantly subverted the wall between subjectivity and objectivity, but even in more realistic films like CHINATOWN and TESS, the unease owes to the sense that 'exteriority' is inseparable from 'interiority'. At the ending of CHINATOWN, we don't merely notice that there is corruption in L.A. Rather, we sense it in the very air that people breathe. It is pervasive, everywhere, and inescapable. It's like being in a funeral where everyone breathes the fumes emanating from the dead. TESS is remarkable for being saturated with an air of poignancy. If romantic tragedy could be a perfume, Tess was it and filled the air.
Polanski knew how to get under the skin, which is why his version of MACBETH is one of the best Shakespeare adaptations. There are moments in the film when Macbeth's psychology becomes ours. We become hypnotized and spellbound by the same madness. And TESS has the power of mood and aura. It's like a house of hearts.
This element is missing from Schlesinger's MADDING CROWD, and part of the reason could have been the novel's intimidating stature as literary classic, one that dampened creative freedom by commanding faith and reverence. It's often been said that inferior novels make for better adaptations because film-makers feel free to do as they wish, whereas classics come with towering reputations that tend to overshadow film-makers' confidence.

Now, there are advantages to 'impersonal' professionalism or cinema-of-quality as well. Auteurism is a double-edged sword. In the hands of a master like Kubrick, Kurosawa, Welles, or Polanski, the source material can be transformed into something remarkable, at once true to the spirit of the source and inspired in ways beyond the scope of the original. Ridley Scott's version of BLADE RUNNER, in certain respects, goes beyond Philip K. Dick's novel. And Schlesinger, as auteur, did likewise with his adaptation of MIDNIGHT COWBOY, an excellent novel in its own right.
But, the downside of auteurism is, more often than not, untalented hacks think the mere application of their 'personal' eccentricities will enhance the material. Terry Gilliam is maybe the worst offender, but there are others. MASTERPIECE THEATER, like old Hollywood, has its strengths and limitations. Because it emphasized professionalism, it could be relied on for decent first-rate productions. Its rules hampered artistic personality but also suppressed self-indulgence. More often than not, freedom in cinema has meant freedom to be stupid than genius because stupidity is far more common than genius, which cannot be faked.

A young shepherd, Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates at his handsomest), proposes marriage to Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie at her loveliest)... They would make a handsome couple. Gabriel is clearly intelligent, hard-working, and responsible. He pleads his case well. But Bathsheba declines, because she does not “love” him, and to her mind, it is as simple as that. One has to wonder, though, what exactly she means by love, and why it features so prominently in her decision, since rural farm folk tend to be very pragmatic about such matches.

In describing Bates as 'at his handsomest' and Christie 'at her loveliest', Lynch answers his own question. Sure, on the socio-economic level, these are rural farming folks who need to be pragmatic in work and business, but beauty has its own logic. In a way, Gabriel Oak is just as deluded and dreamy as Bathsheba. If he's so pragmatic and responsible, or rooted in the real world, why doesn't he find some nice rural woman and settle down with her? Why does he stick around Bathsheba's manor even though she can be insulting and impetuous? Because he is madly in love with her even though he is careful and hard-nosed enough not to show it. In Bathsheba, he wasn't just looking for a good match, a good farm wife. Surely, he could have found one of those as he is reasonably handsome and capable. But his mind is set on Bathsheba and no one but her. Indeed, it seems even his dream of raising sheep and becoming rich was to win Bathsheba's heart. Outwardly, he is a hardworking and responsible character, but in some ways, his devotion to Bathsheba betrays a mad love that is no less mad than the passion of others in the story.
Also, there is a hierarchy to beauty. While Alan Bates is reasonably handsome, he isn't beautiful. In contrast, Bathsheba is. Just like University of Michigan, though good, isn't Yale or Princeton, the fact is Gabriel Oak isn't on Bathsheba's level.
There is also the element of class. Bathsheba, as inheritor, is a woman of property whereas Oak isn't. Later, we meet William Boldwood who is a man of property, but he's aged and less attractive. Thus, neither is a dream match for Bathsheba. She is a flower in bloom. Oak, like his name, is a tree, but one that nevertheless longs to protect the flower from rain and wind.

Anyway, it misses the point to be sour with Bathsheba because she doesn't make a sensible choice. Furthermore, if she had acted sensibly, there wouldn't be much of a conflict and story as means to tease out the tangled threads of the heart and mind.

Soon Bathsheba moves away, and Gabriel tries to put her out of his mind. But when Gabriel’s flock is killed in a ghastly accident, he is forced to up stakes and seek employment on another man’s farm.

The dog that ran off the leash and drove the sheep over the cliff anticipates Troy's impact on the lives of villagers, and yet can we really blame the dog? A dog's true nature is that of the wolf, a warrior-beast. One part of the dog wants to obey & serve the master, but another part of the dog wants to be its own master and run wild-and-free. It want to be a wolf again. It's understandable why Oak shoots the dog, but we can also understand why the dog acted as it did.
And this applies to Troy as well. In some ways, he is a disruptive figure, rather like Randall McMurphy in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and Paul Newman in COOL HAND LUKE. But in another way, we can see why Bathsheba and men in the village are drawn to him. In a society of so many dour rules and regulations, he represents charisma and independence. (Sadly, current UK has moved to the other extreme, made all the worse because its main Troys are now mostly black who lack even the tragic romanticism of Troy. Notice BBC features a Negro as Achilles, the killer of Hector before the gates of Troy.)

When Bathsheba fires the farm’s bailiff for thievery, she decides that she will manage the farm herself. She is, in short, one of those “headstrong, independent women” that every year advertisers and journalists tell us are brand new, not like the shrinking violets and clinging vines of last year... However, unlike today’s strong, independent woman stories, Far from the Madding Crowd is not a feminist morality play. Quite the opposite. Hardy shows that Bathsheba’s independence is actually a source of great suffering for herself and the people around her...

I didn't get the sense that she was supposed to be 'headstrong, independent woman'. If anything, her decision seemed practical at the moment as there wasn't anyone to replace the bailiff. Also, the fact that her uncle/aunt had hired and kept around such a crook for so long goes to show that maybe older people aren't necessarily wiser.

Does the story show that Bathsheba's independence is a source of great suffering? But, didn't things really go south when she abandoned her independence and married Troy, with whom she became tragically besotted? Now, one could argue that female independence is doomed because a woman will use it to eventually surrender her freedom to an alpha-male-type who tends to be vain, narcissistic, and irresponsible. So, maybe it's better to deny women independence and match them with responsible men than let them run free and choose, because what they'll end up doing is surrendering their freedom to some cad, jerk, or a**hole(like maybe loverboy Ricardo Spencerio)? Maybe Nina Koupriovna would have done better to marry some nice bookwormish lad than the cad Spencer, the man who would be 007 crossed with Darth Vader and Batman.

But here's the thing. Given Bathsheba's personal nature, I think things would have been doomed just the same even if she had married or been married off to some responsible kind of man. She's the kind of woman who has to 'sow her wild oates' before she finally comes to her senses.
Some people learn fast or obey orders. Others have to get burned before they finally realize that the normal, the real, and the limited have value. Consider the ending of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. The woman had to undergo rejection and humiliation before finally settling on a life with Pip(than with a pimp).
And then, there is the crazy little thing called love. In DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, the main character has a perfectly good wife, but the real love of his life is Lara, and nothing could be done about that. For some people, essentialism is enough. They heed the timeless advice of eternal truths or conventional wisdom. But other people come to grips with reality only by the way of exisentialist process of experience, actualization, and realization. While most people would do better to stick with the tried-and-true, the West moved beyond tradition because of its power of will to be different, independent, and break free of the mold. Had Bathsheba been a Chinese girl in traditional society, she would likely have done as told, just like most of the men. But she has an independent streak, and it is a double-edged sword, a force of good and bad. Also, even if she acts rather callously with her freedom, it is that very quality that makes her so enticing to men like Oak and Boldwood. She is exciting, like Catherine(Jeanne Moreau) in JULES AND JIM. Though not exactly a femme fatale like Lulu in THE BLUE ANGEL or the nymphet in LOLITA(though, to be sure, that obsession was more Humbert Humbert's own doing), she catches the eyes of men like Oak and Boldwood because of her carefree spirit. Precisely because British society was rigid, regimented, and orderly -- where everyone was supposed to know his or her part -- , someone like Bathsheba really sticks out and enchants those around her.

The basic message of Far from the Madding Crowd is that empowering a person who lacks wisdom and maturity is a bad thing. Indeed, empowering such people actually cuts them off from the sources of wisdom and maturity that they need. But it is not just an anti-feminist message, although in this case the primary victim is a woman. It is an anti-individualist message, for the whole thrust of individualism is to empower people to make their own decisions, regardless of wisdom and maturity.

I'm all for wisdom and maturity, but how does one come upon them? By the trials and errors of life(where errors are sometimes quite valuable and possessed of worth & meaning, just like some foods come with key nutrients along with the toxins; also to get the honey, one must first go through the bees). The thing is to learn from them.
At the end of the story, one might say Bathsheba and Oak are wiser and maturer precisely because they made 'mistakes' and lived through them. It's a story as old as history itself. Take Adam and Eve in Eden. In a way, one might say they didn't deserve the freedom that foolishly made them eat from the Forbidden Tree. But without freedom, they would have been robots, not humans. Also, by the tragedy of disobeying God's wisdom, they set off a complex and fascinating chain of events that made humanity so interesting.

The historical difference between the East and the West is that the former was more about the rule by the wise and mature(the elderly) and obedience by the social inferiors(usually the young). As a result, East Asia has been historically more stable than the West, but it has also been more static and stagnant. Wisdom and maturity are real strengths, but they are also ruses for power, corruption, lack of imagination, fear of change, and/or greed. Furthermore, while it's true that people may grow wiser with age, they may also grow colder and more cynical, resentful(in envy of youth), and bitter. Patriarchy has its advantages and is preferable to rule by young brutes, but it can also be stuffy and stultifying. And when an old dog can't learn new tricks, is it really wise? And even if there could be a perfectly nice society ruled by the wise and mature, would it be ideal for the young to just take advice from wise men instead of breaking out on their own and discovering for themselves what is good and bad? A parent may want his children to do as told and listen to good advice, but if a child always acts 'ideal', is he really living and becoming a man? Isn't defiance a part of what makes life meaningful? After all, a child has to learn from scrapes and bruises what pain and healing are all about. It seems helicopter parenting has done more harm than good to many kids who were, from cradle, told to follow advice than find out or think for themselves.

There is a reason why Germanic Saga needs someone like Siegfried and why Arthurian legend need someone like Perceval. While it's true that Siegfried and Perceval are inexperienced, naive, immature, and foolish at times, they also have spirit, will, and 'idealism' lacking among the established members of the Order whose roles are so set in stone that they themselves cannot bring about necessary change. Just like it took the Young Turks to create Modern Turkey from the corpse of the Ottoman Empire, there is something to be said about youth. Ancient Athens was full of youthful vigor and spirit. It made a lot of mistakes, some of them grave, but it was also a center of innovation and revolution. In contrast, Byzantine Civilization was all about timeless wisdom and truth as revealed by Christ, but it was iron rule by a corrupt elite that suppressed new ideas and thoughts lest they upset the harmonious order of orthodoxy.
And consider 'wisdom' and 'maturity' at play in the films JEAN DE FLORETTE and MANON OF THE SPRING. The old farmer uses all his guile to destroy the upstart young would-be-farmer from the city, just like the Sicilian patriarchs in THE GODFATHER PART II use their 'respected' positions to ruthlessly bump off rivals. Of course, one could argue that such men are not truly wise or mature despite their stations in the community, but too often in history, what passes for 'wisdom' and 'maturity' are tried-and-true means of power than truth or justice at any price. Look around at most aged politicians, academics, journalists, and etc., and we don't see much in the way of wisdom or maturity but merely the guise of such. Besides, people will disagree on what is wise and mature.

Also, true wisdom and maturity come with experience, and that's why Bathsheba's wisdom/maturity at the end has genuine value. She earned it through experience. She lived through her mistakes and failures. But the thing is they weren't merely mistakes and failures but motivated by real dreams and passions. Her wisdom at the end is a lived and attained wisdom. In contrast, had she not been free and merely listened to the advice of elders and did as told, she never would have felt that her wisdom is truly hers since she just received and obeyed without having experienced and learned. This is the problem with academics. So few of them really live and experience reality. Rather, they just receive the 'wisdom' of their elders in colleges. As teachers' pets, they don't need to think or try things out for themselves. They feel they know because they've been told. In contrast, many on the Dissident Right, for good or ill, decided to find out for themselves what is true or not based on their own observations and realizations than on the received 'wisdom' of PC from boomer elders.
Also, today's feminism is not about free and independent women. Rather, it's about all these girls raised by Big Sister and Big Media/Academia. In contrast, Bathsheba is a free spirit, at least for awhile, because she is free of patriarchy, the church, and yet non-existent feminist 'sisterhood'.

Another point of the story is that there is a power greater than wisdom and maturity. The mythic power of romantic love, which simply can't be dismissed as foolishness. And it's not just Bathsheba who comes under this spell in relation to Troy. It affects Gabriel Oak too. He's good at hiding his feelings, but he is madly smitten with Bathsheba. And Boldwood's assumed wisdom and maturity are instantly rendered useless against the charms of Bathsheba, even when she confesses her callous act and rejects his offer of marriage. So, what good is wisdom and maturity when even a hard-headed, responsible, experience, mature, and wise man like Boldwood falls head-over-heels over a tart like Bathsheba? Good or bad, love is what Richard Spencer likes to characterize certain things: "It is what it is." It's like Ace Rothstein just can't let go of Sharon Stone's character in CASINO even though, by all rational calculations, she was not a safe bet. It's likely think Scorsese quoted a scene from MADDING CROWD for CASINO: Bathsheba catches Boldwood's eye when she tosses wheat at bidders at the market, and Stone does the same with the chips at the craps table. For serious buttoned-down men for whom everything is business, it is refreshing to see a spirited woman with devil-may-care attitude.


Also, the element of mystery in love owes to the difference between attraction and obsession. Anyone can feel attracted to any man or woman because he or she happens to be good-looking. But why the obsession that, unlike mere attraction, lingers and clings? Why was Humbert so powerless before Lolita? Why couldn't Zhivago resist his love for Lara? Why did the German professor give up everything for the singer in THE BLUE ANGEL? In the Yukio Mishima short story PRIEST AND HIS LOVE, why did a wise elderly Buddhist priest lose his peace of mind after a glimpse of a woman? American pop scholars Beavis and Butthead might say it was 'boing', but obsession goes beyond 'boing'. It's about Boing and Time, Boing and Nothingness.

Love is strange, which is why Merlin warns against it in EXCALIBUR.

https://ianwinterton.co.uk/what-about-nicol-williamson-as-merlin-in-excalibur/

“I once stood exposed to the dragon’s breath so a man could lie one night with a woman. It took me nine moons to recover and all for this lunacy called love, this mad distemper that strikes down both beggar and king. Never again!”

And yet, without the madness of love, men wouldn't fight for glory. After all, the Trojan War was about Helen of Troy. And there would have been no Arthur if not for Uther's desire for Igraine. There's no new life without mating of men and women. Now, any man or any woman will do to create life, and in the animal world, chimps will hump just about any other chimp, even granny chimps in HAROLD AND MAUDE fashion. But humans developed an eye for beauty like a tooth for sweetness, and so, there is a fascination with romantic love that supposedly transcends mere heat of the moment.

Also, the fascination with the power of love has to do with its odd blend of fragility and tenacity. When a big lug with an ax towers over you, that is an obvious kind of power. Or if some guy is smart and has expertise in organizing men, that kind of power is also easily understood. In contrast, women are weaker than men. And beautiful men are not necessarily the most powerful. Beauty, in and of itself, is useless in the utilitarian sense, and yet it's precious like gold and enchants people in the same way. People fought with swords made of bronze and iron but for gold, which for most of human history, was pretty useless from a pragmatic point of view. Likewise, people struggle with hands and feet to win the pretty face.

In a way, we can dismiss this fixation with love & beauty as foolishness, and we may agree that maturity-and-wisdom means to look beyond romantic enticements. And yet, the power of beauty has its own 'logic'. No matter how much one may be resolved to say NO to beauty, there it is, and even the most mature and learned man whose attitude is 'been there, done that' may instantly go 'gaga' over beauty. Take the film LOVE AND DEATH IN LONG ISLAND which begins with a jaded English writer who feels he's seen and felt just about everything. He's inured to life as same-old same-old routines of boredom and seems impervious to any foolish passion, and yet, upon watching some pretty boy in a teen comedy, he is totally smitten. On the one hand, he is indeed being foolish and begins to act silly. And yet, there is a sense of excitement and vigor that had been missing in his life, and it could only have come from this fascination with the young actor.



Gabriel... consistently demonstrates manly self-discipline, conscientiousness, and technical mastery. He is, in truth, a natural leader—an alpha male... He’s a rock. He’s always there for her. And apparently there’s nothing the least bit loveable or sexy about it from her point of view.

Is he a natural leader? He seems more a natural doer. He is capable, and others rely upon him. But being a good manager isn't quite the same as being a leader who needs the power to inspire others. Gabriel is all hands and feet. He's a carpenter, not an architect. Also, if he's an alpha male, why is he like a loyal dog to a woman who shows no interest in him? He is a sturdy and capable fellow but emotionally as much beta as alpha. And of course there isn't much sexiness about being a 'rock'. Rocks don't rock but stay in place. It's the rolling stones that rock.

One spring day, Bathsheba finds an unused valentine... On a whim, Bathsheba writes “Marry Me” on it and sends it to Mr. Boldwood... A more mature woman would have admitted her mistake, apologized sincerely, and flatly refused him... But Boldwood too was at fault. He was too smitten to grasp Bathsheba’s immaturity and simply would not take no for an answer. Like Gabriel, he should have simply tried to put her out of his mind.

This shoulda-coulda perspective is too schoolmarmish for our understanding of the story. If we take the shoulda-coulda outlook in arts & culture, we can sit around griping endlessly about how foolish a whole bunch of characters acted in plays, novels, and movies. In some cases, the actions are just plain stupid and could have been avoided. But, MADDING CROWD is about individuals acting under a certain power, and the element of free will is only a small part of the whole equation. It's like when a fire is really raging, it has to burn through before people can start to plant and start anew. In the film UGETSU, one may say the potter 'made a mistake' to be seduced by the ghost-temptress, and yet the story makes us understand why the spell was irresistible. If we take a libertarian rationalist perspective, it sure was stupid for Scotty to fall head-over-heels in love with Madeline in VERTIGO, but the mythic power of love was such that he was sucked into the undertow. So, taking a rationalist and moralist approach to MADDING CROWD doesn't make us understand what is going on.
The problem is not that Boldwood is 'at fault'. He is under a spell, and it is just too powerful. Even if he decided to wake up one day and rationally will himself to forget about Bathsheba, her image and voice will haunt him all day and night. It's beyond his personal will.
Also, Oak did NOT put her out of his mind. Because he grew up tough and poor, he knows his place in the world. He knows he's no lover boy nor how to be one. He was compelled to be pragmatic all his life, and so he carries on with nose-to-grindstone. And yet, she has never left his mind. He sticks around not only for work but because he too is quietly smitten with her. The difference is that Boldwood, as a man of means and property, has a chance of winning her whereas Oak hasn't, at least until the very end when Bathsheba's been through so much that she needs a rock to hold onto. Anyway, it was easier for Oak to accept reality because he has slim chance of winning her, especially upon realizing that she's wealthier than he'd assumed at the beginning. In contrast, Boldwood is bound to suffer more because he feels he has the station and wealth to win her over. She seems within his grasp, which is why he can't let go.
Furthermore, Oak has youth and looks, which counts for something in a man. Even if Bathsheba won't have him, he has a kind of pride of strength and health. In contrast, Boldwood is a middle-aged man for whom Bathsheba is the last chance for real love and happiness. As a man of means, he could have married some nice woman long ago, but he devoted himself to work and property and assumed he'd be content with that. But in the encounter with Bathsheba, he realized how empty life was on his own, and it has to be her and her alone because she made him realize that emptiness of his. It's like a man who'd grown accustomed to undernourishment but then eyes a juicy steak that makes his mouth water so much that it has to be that steak and only that steak alone.

A mature and sensitive woman would never have trifled so callously with the old bachelor’s heart.

And yet he's grateful because he feels alive again. A mature and sensitive woman might have left him alone, but then, his entire life would have been the same old same old until he grew old and died without knowing any passion. But despite the agony and ultimately tragedy, Boldwood felt alive because of Bathsheba's high-spirited flirtation that seemed so fresh and flighty. She was like spring to a man who'd settled on never-ending winter. A bear out of hibernation is especially hungry. It's like what the woman brings to the spartan community in BABETTE'S FEAST. It disrupts the social order devoted to piety and virtue, but the folks are also grateful for flavors they'd never known.
Maturity and sensitivity are good generally but also repressive of spontaneity and inspiration. In our time, we need to stress maturity and wisdom as we live in the Age of Shameless Infantilism, but things were different in the world of MADDING CROWD. Back then, British society needed more freedom and individuality, not less. It's like warm tea is for winter, cold lemonade is for summer. We must be careful not to project current problems onto the past. Everything needs balance. It's like Robin Williams' loosening up the classroom in DEAD POETS SOCIETY makes sense in that preppy milieu, and Edward James Olmos was good to bring order & discipline to the rough barrio school in STAND AND DELIVER. Is something too hot, cool it down; if something is too cold, warm it up.

Bathsheba's valentine antic was silly and childish, but it was also unexpected. It had an element of spark. In a world where everything is routine and predictable, what Boldwood never expected came to be and ignited something in him. He received a love offer, and he was bedazzled. In SEPARATE PEACE by John Knowles, Finny certainly lacks 'maturity and sensitivity', but he's the life of the school because he takes chances and has lots of charm, which makes Gene envious and resentful.

Bathsheba might well have ended up marrying Boldwood were it not for the appearance of cavalry sergeant Francis Troy... Although his face entirely lacks beauty or character, the fact that he is tall, dashing, and wears a uniform makes him irresistible to women. Troy, however, is a cad, with a full suite of what the manosphere calls “Dark Triad” traits—narcissism, sociopathy, and manipulativeness—which women commonly mistake for healthy alpha male traits...

Terence Stamp lacks beauty? I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Terence Stamp was considered one of the most beautiful men of his time. And he looks fabulous in MADDING CROWD. It's no wonder he was cast in Pasolini's TEOREMA as a god-like figure who comes to a bourgeois family and commit sexual-like acts, homo and straight, with each of the members. John Simon called it 'godomy'.



It seems Lynch sees too much of Richard Spencer in Troy(LOL), and this clouds his judgement about the character. Troy is something of a cad but not entirely, and he is not without certain depths and twisted integrity of his own.

Before Bathsheba came on the scene, Troy had seduced, impregnated, and then abandoned one of the farm girls, Fanny Robin. He actually agreed to marry her. But it was an impromptu affair, and when she went to the wrong church at the appointed time, his vanity was so inflamed that he broke the engagement.

That over-simplifies what really happened. One doesn't get the sense that Troy seduced a farm girl merely for self-amusement. Also, it probably didn't require much in the way of seduction because it's easy to fall for a handsome dashing soldier. And, he didn't abandon her but called off the wedding when she arrived late. This wasn't just a matter of simpering vanity. The fact is, despite Troy being a man without means, he was willing to do the right thing and marry below his station because he had genuine feelings for Fanny. Besides, as he didn't know about the pregnancy, he wasn't acting out of social compulsion. In his view, he was being gracious and going out of his way to do a favor to Fanny. All his men surely heard about the wedding, and he invited some of them to the ceremony. So, he did his part to do something for Fanny, but the simple-minded country girl totally humiliated him in front of his peers. It wasn't really her fault, but we can surely understand his fury. This was a matter of wounded pride, not mere vanity. And back then, a man's reputation relied much on pride and honor. So, it is understandable why he found Fanny's absence at the wedding to be utterly intolerable.

In one of the best scenes of the film, Boldwood tries to bribe Troy into marrying Fanny and leaving Bathsheba to him. Troy toys with Boldwood, then announces that he is too late, for he has married Bathsheba that very morning. Boldwood is crushed.

This is actually to Troy's credit. It shows that he is not just about money and cannot be bought. He does have a sense of pride and, if anything, despises Boldwood for being so weak and ultimately servile.

The honeymoon does not last long... He is immediately accepted as lord of the manor, but he has no knowledge of farming or interest in responsibility. In a scene that beautifully illustrates his character—or lack of it—he regales the adoring farmhands with bawdy military songs while drinking them under the table. Meanwhile, a storm brews up, and when Gabriel tries to get some of the farmhands away from the party to secure the hayricks from being blown away, he is rebuffed by Troy who does not want to lose his audience. It is classic narcissist behavior. So Gabriel and Bathsheba herself struggle in the storm, soaked to the bone, to save the farm from loss while Troy’s revelries continue.

Again, this is an over-simplification of what really happened. It was a festive moment with dancing, music, and food-and-drinks. Anxious of the looming storm, Oak rather feebly tries to convey the message to Troy who, at the moment, is in a middle of a dance with Bathsheba. Naturally, Troy doesn't want to be interrupted. If Oak really cared about recruiting some men to tie the hay down, he should have gone to Troy directly, but he uses a rather ineffective doddering intermediary. Too busy dancing, Troy never heard anything about the storm. So, it's not like he refused aid despite knowledge of the looming storm. He never got the message. Also, Oak could have made his case before the people in the barn AFTER THE DANCE, but he remains tight-lipped. Why didn't Oak himself walk up to Troy. Because he has his own sense of wounded pride. He is quietly sulking over the fact that the woman HE loves married Troy. So, he'd rather use a go-between. And if he really needed a few men to help him, he could pulled them away without permission from Troy who isn't paying much attention anyway.

Also, is it such a bad thing that, once in a long while, the men of the village have a pretty good time with song and drink with Troy who, instead of looking down on them as mere farmhands, treats them as fellow-revelers? The fact is Troy never heard of the storm, and it took some time before the men in the barn were totally drunk. But Oak never once runs back in to call for help.
In a way, he seems almost grateful to go it alone because hard work is his therapy, his way of coping with disappointments. Some people go for comfort-food. Oak goes for comfort-work. It's a way to get his mind off things.
But more importantly, it is his opportunity to demonstrate his true worth to Bathsheba. It is through work and hardship that he is able to bond with her, if only for a moment as she comes out to work alongside him. He can't be the white knight but can be the work-horse who proves his worth. And Bathsheba is impressed and grateful for what seems like selfless devotion on his part. While the sheep are prancing with the wolf in the barn, the loyal dog is weathering the storm to serve the master.

Bathsheba is willing to suffer quite a lot because she is “in love” with Troy.

Mythic love is the strongest and most potent kind of love. What is the appeal of Greek mythology? Why do mortals fall in love with gods and even make love with them? By human standards, gods seem vain, irresponsible, and self-indulgent, but that's because they are gods and live by their own rules. A vulgarized form of this is celebrity worship in our society, and it's often stupid. But we can understand why people feel this way. Children naturally identify with princes and princesses than with hardworking peasants or blacksmiths. In MONTY PYTHON'S HOLY GRAIL, the toiling peasants rail against the exploitative king and nobility, but we are always drawn more to gods, kings, knights, and heroes than with ordinary folks, no matter how decent they are.



Now, I'm all for humanism, but the mythic side of human psychology isn't going away anytime soon. In the end, humanism prevails because no man, however brilliant or handsome, is literally a god. They grow old and die. Look at Sean Connery now. Still, we can understand why Bathsheba fell in love with Troy for his 'vain' and 'irresponsible' godlike qualities. He acts like he's too good for ordinary work. Though not of noble lineage(as far as I could tell), he was of the warrior profession and comports like a man suited for adventure and glamour. In MILDRED PIERCE, why does the eponymous heroine toil to support a man of finesse and class? Because one can't really buy style. Some have it, some don't. Now, is Troy a contemptible figure like the guy in MILDRED PIERCE? Deeply flawed but no. There is a saving grace about Troy to which Lynch is willfully blind.

But things come crashing down when a very pregnant Fanny Robin shows up at the farm asking for Troy’s help, then promptly dies in childbirth. When the coffin is brought to the farm for burial, Gabriel hides the fact that it also contains a baby... Troy then walks in, and... he seems to be filled with love and remorse for Fanny... He is simulating love and dejection merely to spite Bathsheba. Troy then goes to the ocean, undresses, and swims out to sea.

Lynch fails to mention that when Fanny showed up, Troy was kind and gentle with her, and he did try to get the money for her. Troy is not without a soul. He did have and still has genuine feelings for Fanny. Bathsheba misunderstood this by suspecting infidelity on his part. She thought he was asking for money for an affair. It was to do right by Fanny.

As for Troy's sudden rush of emotions about dead Fanny, something he hadn't felt before, it too has to do with the mythic dimensions of love. While alive, Fanny was just a pretty girl he'd been engaged to or a pitiable figure in need of charity, but as a dead woman(especially with his child) she becomes the stuff of myth. There's a blend of guilt, spirituality, and poetry in how Troy feels about Fanny as ghost. It's like Madeleine comes to mean much more to Scotty after she dies in VERTIGO. She goes from sad beauty to the stuff of myth. And in LA STRADA, the death of Gelsomina has a devastating effect on Zampano. She goes from human dog to an angel.

The notion that Troy was merely 'simulating' or faking emotions to spite Bathsheba doesn't do justice to what really happens in that scene. Troy may not be a deep character who carries life lessons wherever he goes, but he is consumed by the passion of the moment, and his pathos upon gazing at dead Fanny was not fake. In that moment at least, he discovered a kind of love he had never known or felt, and compared to this dark love of tragic poetry, Bathsheba looked like a flighty little bird, a nothing. He becomes, at least for awhile, as consumed in his love for mythic Fanny as Bathsheba is for mythic Troy(and as Boldwood is for mythic Bathsheba). In all three cases, the characters see more than there really is, but then love is always an illusion to some degree. To Boldwood, Bathsheba isn't just a pretty woman but a goddess whom he must serve if not possess. To Bathsheba, Troy isn't just a handsome feller but a god-man who lives by his own rules. It's as if he descended from Mt. Olympus. And to Troy, the image of dead Fanny and her child fills him with dark and deep vision of love and beauty he hadn't known but now knows and feels with such power(though not forever as he's not that kind of man).

Love is subjective and relative. It's like the circus scene when Troy in disguise stands before a horse trained to feign death. Some in the audience are laughing, some are amused, some are a bit sad, but one man is bawling in grief. Why? Something especially mushy about his character? Or did he know of a beloved horse that died?
Individuals and objects elicit different responses from us depending on our emotional nature, genetic makeups, life histories, and memories. Fanny, Troy, and Bathsheba belong to a circular trio whereas Oak and Boldwood are left out. What do Fanny, Troy, and Bathsheba have in common? All three were overcome with mad love and were objects of mad love. Bathsheba was the object of mad love by Boldwood and Oak(who hides it beneath his tough and hardened exterior). Troy was the object of mad love by Bathsheba(and perhaps Fanny). And Fanny, at least in death, becomes the object of mad love by Troy. In contrast, no one loved Boldwood and Oak madly.

As Christmas approaches, Boldwood... will be announcing his engagement. But then disaster strikes... Troy reappears. He has faked his death. But having heard of Bathsheba’s prospective engagement, he returns out to spite to assert his marital rights. Bathsheba is shocked and refuses to follow him. So Troy begins to manhandle her. Then we hear a shot. Troy falls dead on the stairs. Boldwood stands with a rifle.

I think saying that he 'faked' his death is too harsh. Based on what is shown, it seems he failed in his death. Drowning oneself at sea isn't easy. Also, what did Troy have to gain by faking his death? Having failed in his death, he hides in shame by traveling around with some hokey circus troupe doing pony tricks.
One thing for sure, he did swim far out to sea after taking his clothes off. If he really just wanted to fake his death, he wouldn't have gone nude at all or ran into the waves. He would have just left some clothes behind and ran off.

Then we witness one of the most wrenching tragic climaxes since Sophocles. Bathsheba breaks down in tears over her beloved Frank. Boldwood looks on, in utter horror, at the abyss of irrationality into which he has now flung his life. He will hang for this, for absolutely nothing. Two men are dead, one noble, the other absolutely base, all for a woman of genuine beauty and goodness who was empowered to make catastrophic decisions that destroyed two lives and brought misery to her own.

LOL. I'm telling you. Troy isn't as bad as Richard Spencer but then Richard Spencer isn't as bad as 'Richard Spencer', the delusional Faustian Batman. He just needs to grow up and put away childish things.

Irrationality, yes, but emotions are irrational. Why was Boldwood so obsessed with Bathsheba? Irrational. And yet, it is too simplistic to say that he will 'hang... for absolutely nothing'. He will hang for the profound truth of love. And if he were given a choice between a scenario where he never fell in love with Bathsheba & lived a quiet life all alone AND a scenario where he faces execution after having fallen in love with her and killed for her, he might still have chosen the latter because it brought him close to love and passion even if it leads to the gallows. Tragedy has its own beauty.
Also, ironically enough, it is his killing of Troy that reignites her mad passion for Troy, just like the death of Fanny made Troy love her more than he could have loved her alive. And in a way, it's fitting that both men's lives end in doom. Troy, the man for whom Bathsheba felt impossible love, and Boldwood, the man who felt impossible love for Bathsheba. Boldwood may hang, but for several years, he has truly lived life and plumbed the depths of human emotions from the high drama. When he killed Troy, did he think he was protecting Bathsheba from him? Did he kill out of jealousy? And yet, even though Bathsheba and Boldwood will never be together, they are united in the same emotions, that of the impossible love. Whatever happens, Troy was the great love of her life, and whatever happens, Bathsheba was the great and only love of Boldwood's life.

When, at the end of STRAW DOGS, Dustin Hoffman's character finally finishes off one of the invaders with a wolf trap, it turns out his wife is more horrified by the death(of her former lover and rapist) than relieved to see her husband triumphant. Irrational perhaps, but there is an underlying rationality to irrationality. If in evolutionary history, women gravitated toward and felt safer with stronger alpha males than weaker males, then women will be genetically programmed to favor alphas over betas. And if we evolved to appreciate beauty as an intoxicant, then it is natural and 'rational' that we would be smitten with it and work so hard to attain it in one form or another. Everything 'irrational' makes sense from another perspective. If beauty is precious and alluring, then people will be drawn to beauty like plants to sunlight. Just like the beautiful Rhine Maiden say NO to the ugly Nibelungen, the game of beauty is where the blessed few get to play gods, at least in the summer of youth.

Also, Boldwood isn't that noble, and Troy isn't that base. If Boldwood were so noble, he would care more about the betterment of the community than fixate so heavily on bliss with Bathsheba. And Troy, like the Burt Lancaster character in THE SWIMMER, is a romantic, a saving grace. He is sometimes a jerk, but he is more, if in surprise even to himself. But then, no one fully understands oneself, and things happen that release emotions that shockingly upend one's sense of self and worldview. There is a gentle kind of wisdom that one learns through study and discourse, but there is another kind of wisdom that can only be attained by trial by fire. It's like there's gentle conversion to a new faith based on sacred texts & rituals, and then, there's impassioned conversion like Paul's Damascus moment. A sense of being born again.

...instead of wasting away in Bathsheba’s friend zone, Gabriel decides to move to America. Only then does Bathsheba truly appreciate him. For she can only really love a man who is independent of her. She rushes to stop him. Gabriel says he will stay under one condition. Then, in a gesture that will pierce even the most cynical hearts, he repeats word for word his vision of married life that she had rejected at the beginning of the film. But this time she says yes. It was the right choice...
The movie ends with Gabriel and Bathsheba settling into married bliss. But then the eye of the camera strays over to Troy’s clock, focusing on the soldier in the tower, like a memento mori to remind us that the Troys of the world and the irrational romanticism they evoke will always threaten marriage and family life.

Did Oak really plan on moving to America or was it a ploy to bind Bathsheba closer to him? And does she suddenly feel love for Oak because of his plan to emigrate, a sign of independence from her? I think not. After all, upon being rebuffed at the beginning of the film, Oak demonstrated his independence by accepting her decision and carrying on. At one time, she banished him from the farm, and he just took up and left. Oak demonstrated, at least outwardly, time and time again that he can go on without her. But all that time, Bathsheba didn't feel any love for him.

In a way, Oak is just as irrational as Boldwood and Troy. If he really wanted a family, he should have found some nice farm girl and started a family. But he remained single because he only cared for one woman. Even when she married Troy and then was about to marry Boldwood, he hung around, unmarried. It was as if he was so smitten with her that he was waiting for second servings and leftovers in case some tragedy struck, and by some luck(or tragedy, but then, one man's misfortune is another man's fortune), chance killed two birds with one stone. Boldwood took out Troy, and the Law took him out. Oak was running third but the first-runner and second-runner tripped over one another, and Oak ended up 'finishing first'.
But then, the fact is Troy had her first, and Boldwood almost had her second. Oak got her by luck, and one wonders what he would have done if she'd married Boldwood and if Troy hadn't returned. Would he have waited around, growing older, in the hope that Boldwood will die and then finally Bathsheba will marry him? There is a slow-burning romanticism in that. The fact is Oak is himself a romantic though he hasn't the style and means to show it. So, he broods silently and takes out his frustrations through hard work. And in the end, he reaps his rewards, but the moral tale isn't just about the primacy of marriage and family. If it were, Oak would have settled down with some nice dependable farm girl than hang around for leftovers because he can't get Bathsheba out of his mind.

Also, in an odd way, Troy was the matchmaker of Bathsheba and Oak because she had to get it out of her system(via her mad burning love with Troy) to finally arrive at a more balanced and stable outlook on life. Her appreciation of Oak couldn't have been possible if not for her tumultuous life journey with Troy, the peaks and pits of her life. It's like it took Dorothy's adventure in the land of Oz for her to finally appreciate that there's no place like home.

The Anglo-Saxon character has been defined by love of risk & adventure and appreciation of security & order. Some on the Alt Right say Spencerism represents the 'imperialist' Anglo will to wander, conquer, and discover whereas 'nationalist' Johnsonism represents the Anglo wish to preserve, defend, and maintain. Both were crucial in the rise of Anglosphere, a spirit of adventure tempered by discipline and sobriety.
After all, the overly cautious are hardly conquerors. East Asian high civilization, conservative and cautious, remained locked within East Asia. In contrast, Europeans were willing to throw caution to the winds and go sailing across oceans just to see what's on the other side. There was an element of madness in all this, but without it, there would have been no triumph of the West. Granted, European adventure was premised on European order, much like church towers are buttressed by support systems, something too many people have forgotten about the West, especially British Civilization.

The tragedy of Troy is he didn't have enough battles to fight. Just like Oak is at his best immersed in work, Troy feels most alive and useful in the battlefield with a saber. Even on the farm, he prefers cockfights to the drudgery of labor, but then that is why Bathsheba married him. She wanted a god with a saber atop a horse, not another farm hand with a pitchfork.

Paradox of how the More Spiritually Pure Protestant North became More Materialist than the More Idolatrous Catholic South that became More Materialistic — Roots of Protestant Productivity

What follows is just a theory and may have been expounded by others earlier. It seeks an explanation as to why the Protestant North became more Materialist(as opposed to Materialistic) even though Protestantism placed greater emphasis on one’s pure-hearted spiritual connection with God. One would think that Protestants, in their rejection of Catholic privilege, corruption, and excessive worldly power, would have devoted most of their energies to prayer, meditation, and being nearer to God.
Instead, Northern European Protestant nations made leaps & bounds and startling breakthroughs in Materialist science, technology, industry, and wealth that, for a time(and even to this day), left the Catholic South in the dust. It is also worth asking why the Catholic South, though less Materialist in their thinking, produced a culture that tended to be more Materialistic, meaning infatuated with material displays of wealth, privilege, and power: Glitter, luxury, and opulence.

Perhaps, the main divide between Catholicism(which retained much of the idolatry of Greco-Roman paganism) and Protestantism(which sought a purist and personal re-connection with core truths of Jesus) is in their respective reaction to ‘relicism’, iconography, and ‘idolism’(a restrained form of idolatry that, at least in theory, treats certain objects as symbols than literally sacred objects). In the pagan worldview, all things are imbued with spirits. In primitive animism, even rocks, trees, and streams are alive with strange powers and energies. So, it was common for primitive tribes to wear bear claws or lion fangs OR wrap themselves in snake skins or crocodile hide. The idea was that the ‘magical’ power of the fearsome beast would be transmitted to the warrior-hunter. This basic idea even continued in high civilizations like Hindu India and Taoist China. Hindus have an elaborate system of the meanings and significance of so many objects and animals. And many Chinese still believe that the some essence of rhinos, tigers, or bears will transfer to them by partaking, respectively, of their horns, penises, or paws. The Ancient Romans tore into an animal and examined its innards in a ritual to prophesy the future. To pagan Romans, the guts of a goat or sheep wasn’t just some gunky stuff. The innards held divine portents of future yet to be. And among the Vikings, there were sorcerers who portended the future by toying with a turtle shell and pieces of bones. Certain objects were deemed sacred... or evil.

Among the Chinese, there developed a ‘superstitious’ system of real-estate assessment and building-design. For good luck, housing plans could not violate Feng Shui. In the movie JEREMIAH JOHNSON, an American Indian tribe reacts vengefully upon discovering white folks trespassed over their sacred burial grounds. All such mindsets blend spirituality with materiality. Actual things and/or animals are said to be possessed of magical powers or cursed with diabolical forces. Therefore, one must be careful in one’s interaction with the world. You must treat sacred things accordingly and avoid(or attempt) to destroy evil things. In such a worldview, spirituality and Satanism aren’t merely matters of the soul but interwoven with certain tangible things all around us. This mentality could apply to humans as well. According to Judaism, one must reject idols and devote oneself to the one and only God who cannot be represented or manifested materially. And yet, Judaism connects God’s blessing with the Jewish pud(and now the Jewesses are trying to shift the neo-covenant from the Pudkin theory to a Pooterin one). So, the Jewish schlong isn’t just a fleshy appendage but an organ favored by God Himself. Thus, spirituality is combined with Jewish blood(and semen). And according to the story of Eden, all the world was a miracle imbued with the spirit of God, especially the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge. But Adam and Eve dared to listen to the Serpent and ate from the Sacred Tree. As punishment, God’s blessing was removed from the material world. Godliness no longer existed in tangible flesh and things but only as traces in the redemptive souls of man... though the one caveat was the Jewish pud, at least if properly circumcised by a Rabbi.

Christianity did away with the Jewish Pudkin Theology and went further in locating God’s essence in the soul than in any part of the flesh. To the extent that every individual has a soul that can choose either spirituality or satanism, the hope lay in the cleansing and redemption of one’s heart and mind. And yet, Christianity also combined spirituality with tangibility to the extent that God was manifested in the human form of His Son Jesus. Also, the ritual of baptism, apparently predating Christianity because, after all, John the Baptist was splashing people around before Jesus came to him. Thus, water, under certain circumstances, wasn’t just water but a soul-purifying agent.

If most great pagan civilizations believed in anything, it was monumentalism. Egyptians built massive pyramids. Babylonians also had their massive works of architecture, as did the Persians. Greeks had theirs too though on a less grandiose scale. Romans were famous builders. It was as if all these civilizations believed that massive structures weren’t only products of power but preservers of power. To live in the proximity of or, better yet, within the walls of architectural grandeur meant that your people were the most powerful. We see the Hollywood Egyptians in Cecil B. DeMille's TEN COMMANDMENTS erect one giant monument after another. Many of them served no useful purpose. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of anything more useless than Egyptian pyramids that required many thousands of workers over decades. All that tremendous amount of energy were exerted to build what were essentially nothing but tombs for dead kings. Whatever one may say of the Great Wall of China, it was built to fend off invaders. (To be sure, their purpose was also symbolic, as if to say, "On THIS side, there are the noble and civilized Chinese, and on THAT side, there are these useless barbarian hordes who must be kept out lest they contaminate our glorious civilization.") In contrast, Egyptian pyramids seem to us like vanity projects gone bonkers. And yet, they made sense to the Egyptian pharaohs and masses who built them because the kings were deemed to carry and transfer, generation after generation, the souls of eternal gods; therefore, the pyramids weren’t merely tombs of the dead but the sanctuaries of divine souls whose spirit and wisdom still governed Egypt in strange and wonderful ways. Egyptians valued pyramids as houses of god-souls like bees value the role of the queen bee within the hive.
Greeks weren’t as ostentatious as the Egyptians, but they too built huge temples to their gods, and both elite and ordinary Greeks offered sacrifices and made entreaties to them. At one time, Persia, with its awesome architecture, was regarded as the greatest and most powerful civilization on earth.

In a world where imperialism was the prevailing mode of power relations among all peoples, a civilization could not hope to rely on fixed boundaries. Boundaries were always shifting, like the line-of-scrimmage in football. So, your civilization could, one year, hold sway over huge swathes of territory, but then, a few years later, hold just one-third of the former size. Since a tribe or civilization couldn’t rely on boundaries for permanence, its best bet for displaying its might was to erect huge monuments and structures of stone, indeed ones so massive that it’d be difficult even for successful invading armies to tear down. I mean, who would want to spend a decade dismantling a pyramid? Also, the sheer magnificence of the structures may seduce the invaders into assimilating into the defeated culture. So, even as the native people may have been defeated, the invaders may, in turn, be culturally ‘defeated’ and won over by the magnificence on display. Instead of totally smashing the civilization, they may pay tribute to it and fall under its sway. Thus, Alexander the Great of Macedon, though conqueror of Egypt and Persia, respected and adopted some of their ways. Various non-Egyptians who invaded Egypt took on the roles of Pharaohs and kept much of the culture intact. Many Mongols were absorbed into Chinese civilization with its impressive structures. And even though Romans defeated the Greeks militarily, the Greeks conquered the Romans culturally. And even though the Germanic barbarians conquered Rome, their later kings aspired to be like the Roman Caesars and dreamed of creating their own Romes. And much of the Renaissance was inspired by the tangible artworks and architecture of the ancient pagans.

In more recent times, there was Ayn Rand’s zealous and quasi-mythological obsession with skyscrapers. And Adolf Hitler wanted German ‘Aryan’ might to be represented and secured by a massive building project in what would be the future city of Germania. And many developing nations became fixated with erecting taller and bigger buildings, not so much for utility or enterprise but as symbols of wealth, success, and relevance.
And Vladimir Putin’s Russia has embarked on a massive building project of new Russian Orthodox Churches. In the West, so as to flatter Negro ego that they are also great builders, at least in the realm of blinged-out fantasy, we’ve had the massive hype about Wakanda that is powered by ‘vibranium’. On that note, monumentalism has its uses and advantages.



But they also have their weaknesses and dangers. For one thing, many civilizations expended tremendous energies toward building things that had no practical value. While certain structures served as protective castles(the early brutalist architecture), fortresses, or walls, many were just white-elephant vanity projects. One wonders if the civilization would have done better to direct its energies toward more productive and useful endeavors. Also, the people of a civilization can develop an idolatrous faith in monumental grandeur, i.e. because they are surrounded by massive and mighty structures, they must be a powerful people. But as any sports team knows, having a gigantic hometown stadium doesn’t ensure victory. A university with modest buildings but with good professors and smart motivated students will do much better than a university with spectacular buildings but with bad professors and lazy-stupid-moronic students.

Too many peoples in history fell under idolatrous spell of monumentalism. Because Rome had awesome buildings, too many Romans got to feeling invincible. Because Chinese built palaces and monuments to symbolize China as the Middle Kingdom, the center of the universe, they grew overly complacent when faced with foreign enemies, especially in the early 19th century when the haughty and arrogant Manchu-Chinese felt they had little to worry from the West because, after all, the center of Chinese power in Peking was such a magnificent place, especially the Forbidden City. It was assumed that foreign devils would forever be forbidden from China, and the Chinese subjects would forever be forbidden from the Forbidden City. Such complacency proved to be fatal. It was also ironic because, after all, the Manchu dynasty on the throne was foreign in origin.

While monuments and awesome displays of power do signify some measure of power — after all, a totally useless society couldn’t build such things and have massive armies — , those who fixate on them overlook the deeper and more substantive sources of power. National Socialist Germany did have a sound basis of power in industry & technology, manpower & work ethic, and military & armaments. But Hitler overestimated German power because the massive displays of might at the rallies and marches created the mythic impression of German invincibility. Indeed, when we look at some of the footage of Nazi rallies, it makes us wonder how any force on earth could withstand German power. And when the initial battles proved to be in Germany’s favor, Hitler gambled everything on conquering Russia as well. While German power, like Ancient Roman power, was seriously real and far from illusory, it had its limits. But Hitler threw caution to the winds because, like so many pagans before him, he thought the gods had chosen him to be the man-of-destiny. Today, Russia puts on massive military parades bigger and more spectacular than anything in the US, but in fact, Russian economy is smaller than that of Italy and even Texas. North Korea puts on some of the biggest military parades annually, but its economy is 1/40th that of South Korea’s. The US spends many times more on its military and has many more jets and naval power than Russia. Also, given the immense depth of its economy, the US on war-footing could assemble a power 20x more powerful than that of Russia. Still, it would be foolish for the US to engage Russia on its home turf. Russia has sufficient manpower and immense natural resources to fend off most invasions. And despite US advantages, the American Public will not support anything like a invasive war on Russia that will surely lead to tons of US casualties as well.
Anyway, while monumentalism and spectacle-ism have their uses, one must never conflate the show with actual power. Body Builders and Professional Wrestlers are very good at showing off their muscles and acting tough, but virtually none of them is not a top-tier athlete in competitive sports. If anything, they tend to be rejects who failed at sports like football.

The reason as to why Northern Europe eventually surpassed and achieved so much more than Southern Europe(that got a head-start in civilization) has many explanations. Some might argue that the greater diversity due to invasive pressures made Southern Europe less cohesive and united. While Northern Europe also used to be overrun by invasions, civilized and barbarian, most of marauders were fellow light-skinned whites. So, Danes invading England and the English invading Ireland were all examples of all-in-the-family. Over time, such peoples could assimilate and become One people, hardly distinguishable from another unless one listened carefully to their accents. As such, most Northern Europeans remained remarkably similar in looks and temperament.
In contrast, Southern Europe wasn’t only invaded by other whites but, at times, by non-whites or Caucasian-non-Europeans(or the conquering Southern Europeans brought as slaves, merchants, or mercenaries non-whites from abroad). Much of the Balkans came under Ottoman rule. Turks ranged from whites to Semites to Central Asian folks. Much of Spain and parts of southern Italy once came under the domination of Moors, even some ghastly blackamoors who deigned to demand, "Where the white women at?" But even long before that, Greeks and Romans were constantly in contact with non-Europeans. Romans even imported slaves from Middle East and Africa. Some black Africans fought as gladiators and, as prized victors, even humped elite Roman women who had jungle fever. It is then not surprising that some Italians, especially in the South, look more like Arabs or North Africans than like Northern Europeans. And many swarthy Greeks look more like Turks or Arabs than light-skinned Europeans in England or Sweden. Given that Arabs and Africans may have lower IQ than Europeans, it meant race-mixing led to decreased intelligence among Southern Europeans. But even putting IQ aside, a people that have been invaded and inter-racially altered by invasions tend to lose a sense of unity of identity and purpose. This explains why multi-racial-caste societies like India and Latin America are so confused and messy. Many Mexicans don’t know if they’re white or indigenous. If Southern Europe got invaded at times by Arabs and Turks, Eastern Europe(especially Russia) was conquered by Mongols and other Asiatics. Even though Russian folks eventually regrouped and expelled the foreigners(and even conquered, in turn, their territories), the messy interaction with non-Europeans led to confused politics and history.
Things were even more problematic in Byzantine civilization that totally disintegrated and vanished from history. At the very least, Russia had a solid core Slavic population, culture, and territory. In contrast, Byzantine Empire was, from conception to demise, a patchwork mosaic of various ethnic groups that were united only by the cultural theme of Greco-Roman glory. But many of these peoples and their rulers were neither Roman nor Greek. An empire composed of peoples without a solid ethnic core, the politics degenerated into intrigues and led to dissipation. Much the same problem beset the Ottoman Empire where Turks dominated militarily but other groups dominated much else, especially in commerce. In contrast to all those empires beset with problems of Diversititis, Northern Europe was securer and more homogeneous, and it was more likely for a culture of conscience, trust, and honor to develop there. Anyway, historians and sociologists surely have many explanations as to the Great Divergence between the North and South in Europe, a phenomenon that has dogged Europe to this day.

Now, let’s consider another factor that may have led to the materialist rise of the North. The famous Max Weber argued that Protestant Work Ethic was a key factor in the industrial rise of the North. Protestantism may have also imbued Northerners with a clarity lacking among Catholics who became mired in monumentalism and idolatry. Because of the syncretism of paganism and Christianity, the Catholic-Southern tendency was to be overly impressed with things deemed miraculous, sacred, beautiful, and monumental. Such were not only aesthetically pleasing to the eyes but the very embodiment of greatness, awesomeness, power, and glory. It was the Building and the Bible, the Look and the Book. Vatican was filled with magnificent structures and huge collections of priceless art, therefore it must be the center of world power. The French became intoxicated with building wonderful things, like the palaces at Versailles. Surely a power housed in such architectural wonders had the blessing of God Himself. The Catholic immersion in rituals(involving various sacred objects) performed in grandiose buildings may have affected the way Catholics regarded political power and economics. After all, in Catholicism it wasn’t enough for you to have faith, no matter how sincere you were. To receive God’s grace, one had to go through an elaborate rigamarole of sacraments and rites. Relics might be involved too, and you believed in miracles manifesting themselves in the physical world, such as tears streaming down a Madonna statue or finding the face of Jesus on a morning toast. Such a mindset may have affected the Catholic conception of power and wealth as well. Thus, the Look of Power could have led to the overestimation of power. Style and facade could be mistaken for substance. In THE GODFATHER, neither Michael, Carlo, nor anyone else is particularly spiritual, but the baptism scene in the Church creates the impression of a culture steeped in religiosity, tradition, and morality. And yet, it is just an outer-shell that houses an emptiness and even elements of what some might call ‘satanism’.

This mentality also existed among aristocrats who, for the most part, preferred the Catholic realm to the Protestant one. After all, the Catholic penchant for pageantry complemented the aristocratic flair for ostentatious vanity. Excessive aesthetic narcissism was bound to be less approved in Protestant social orders where the prevailing cultural mode was to favor the spirit of the Book over the sparkling Look. And yet, aristocrats and quasi-aristocrats everywhere had a tendency toward fanciful displays of status and privilege. Talent and wealth were not enough. One had to have the right kind of look. So, the quasi-aristocrats of the American South were far more conscious of their looks, manners, and styles than the more buttoned-down bourgeois elites of the North. Because Southern elites were less restrained in displaying their wealth and privilege as a form of stagecraft, they could easily overestimate their power because they looked so good, especially in relation to the more utilitarian North. And yet, real power is a matter of substance and numbers, not style and aura. The fact is the North had many more people and a far bigger industrial base. Also, most of the new manpower in the form of European immigrants were entering the North. Imagine two sports teams. One not only has a powerful lineup but great depth in reserve players who can take over when the starters are exhausted. But their uniforms are plain, and they do NOT LOOK very impressive. In contrast, the other team has a solid starting line up but no depth in reserve players. But they are dressed in flashy uniforms that make them look so amazing. Now, which team will likely win? Despite marketing hype, wearing Air Jordans doesn't make you a Michael Jordan. It is indeed telling that, over the years, military uniforms got less & less ornamental and more & more utilitarian until the modern soldiers were dressed and fitted only with practicality & efficiency as considerations. But for much of human history, there was great emphasis on the LOOK of power. Were those plumes on top of Greek and Roman helmets really useful? Did wearing feathered-wings serve any real purpose among the Polish Hussars on horseback?

Why did so many militaries throughout history don or equip themselves with appendages that had no clear use in battle. Indeed, such ancillary fittings could very well be an hindrance. While an Ancient Greek helmet looks nice with stuff on top, it is simply added target for the enemy who could mess up the helmet by taking a swipe at what is on top of it. And on gusty days, the winged gear on a Polish hussar would created more wind resistance. And in close quarter-fighting, it would be something an opponent could grab to pull the hussar to the ground. But for much of human history, wars were monopolized by kings and aristocrats than by entire peoples and nations and, as such, were far more limited affairs, often more like sports games than full-on total war, the aim of which was to totally crush and vanquish an enemy. The vanity of the aristocrats to look impressive and their code of honor created and sustained an agreed upon set of formalities. Aristocrats regarded themselves as having ‘evolved’ and elevated from the brutish ways of their barbarian ancestors who fought more like beasts than men. And as long as the aristocratic order prevailed, warfare could be managed as elaborate rites with the usual fanfare. But the rise of industry and big guns, the formation of mass national armies(far bigger than anything in the age of aristocracy), and the nature of conflict as Total War changed all the dynamics of warfare.
It’s telling that, even up to World War I, German soldiers still had spikes on their helmets. But then, World War I was the last great war of the aristocrats, indeed the great war that brought down all aristocratic orders.

Anyway, a Catholic is more likely to be impressed by the looks of things because his religious practice combined spirituality and materiality, i.e. certain things, big or small, are thought to glow with the aura of power and magic. So, if a Cathedral is to be built, immense amounts of energy and wealth must be devoted to make it look as good as possible. And it wasn’t enough to be rich. One had to show off one’s wealth in ostentatious display, like with those haciendas in Latin America. Quite often, a richer Protestant German or Anglo-American might live in a house that was more modest than the giant mansion of a Catholic oligarch in Spain or Latin America(or, for that matter, a Russian aristocratic prior to the Bolshevik Revolution). To the naked eye, it could easily appear as thought the Latin or Russian guy is richer and more powerful than the German or Anglo guys, but that is seeing the suit than the wallet. Both Catholicism and Russian Orthodox encouraged a mental habit that favored Look-keeping than Book-keeping. Consider the ridiculous figures of Evita Peron and Imelda Marcos who were more obsessed with national image than national industry. But among Latinos, it wasn’t just the women but the men too.

In more recent times, Vladimir Putin, though sensible on many matters, wasted too much time and energy on White Elephant projects like the Sochi Winter Olympics. And even though it’s a good thing for Russia to revive its traditions and build more Orthodox Churches, that won’t change the fact that Russia continues to be woefully underachieving despite its population and land mass with bountiful resources.

In contrast, Protestantism purged from the Northern soul the endless fascination with the magical aura of things. There was no need for Protestants to obsess over sacred relics. And religious rituals were pared down to a minimum. And most churches were designed to be basic and spartan. The purpose of a church was not to feature nice-looking things but to emphasize the need for devotion and prayer to God. Thus de-sacralized in mind and senses, Northern Protestants were bound to take a harder and colder look at the material world. Their perceptions became more utilitarian and practical. In the end, what mattered was, "What can this or that do?" So, even though a cathedral or a palace in a Catholic kingdom was far more impressive than a factory in Manchester, it was the latter that build cannons, ships, and trains whereas cathedrals and palaces, like the Egyptian Pyramids, served no worldly purpose. Over time, Northern Protestants became more materialist in their thinking, i.e. they had a more empirical, rational, practical, and technological relation with the world around them. And yet, being more materialist made them less materialistic. Having a cold-eyed and rational view of the world means valuing materials as things than as treasures.
Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe in the ‘miraculous’ value of things. So, a certain relic isn’t just some thing but a sacred object glowing with mysterious divine force. Consider the mysticism that shrouds a certain house in a placed called the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky’s STALKER. While believing in miracles is a spiritual idea, it can easily be transferred to the material world. Even on the secular level, someone whose mental habits and sensual inclinations are steeped in the Catholic way of thinking-and-feeling is likely to be more enamored of the glittery glamour of precious items like jewelry, fancy dress, expensive cars, and luxurious mansions. The Catholicist mind, having been inculcated into seeing certain things as sacred and miraculous, is more likely to be enticed by the razzle-dazzle of precious objects. It is more likely to be into the celebration of ‘bling’. And such mentality still dogs so much of Latin America where a person or thing is more likely to be judged by his/its image than by his/its real substance. This made them more materialistic.

The appeal of Marxism to many Latin-American intellectuals may have owed to a subconscious sense on their part that the Latin soul must be reformed of Catholicist idolatry. Thus, Marxism was like a secular Protestant Reformation movement for Spanish and Latin American intellectuals. And yet, there was also a Catholicist appeal to communism, especially after the Soviet Union transformed the ideology from a spartan movement for worker justice to a grandiloquent crusade with new gods, prophets, saints, sacraments, rituals, and pageantry. Even as communist nations stressed the simple life and virtue of hard work, they spent exorbitant sums to put on massive displays that made the Catholic Church blush. Indeed, at the very end of the Soviet Union, the two things it still had left were massive spectacles and a program to win lots of ‘blings’ at the Olympics. Impressive as a white elephant but dead as an economic elephant. And to this day, Russia pays too much attention to image, symbolism, and monuments than to the real factors that lead to greatest development in science, technology, and industry. Russia will host World Cup Soccer in 2018. More wasteful expenditure on what amounts to little more than White Elephant Dung.

In contrast to Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Protestantism had little use for relics, icons, displays, pageantry, rites & rituals, and spectacles. This made Protestantism a duller religion to the eye. But by de-sanctifying objects and materiality, a purer form of spirituality was possible. Piety and faith in Protestantism didn’t rely on one’s communion or interaction with tangible objects deemed holy. Granted, there developed several sects(or denominations) of Protestantism, and some were rather close to Catholicism in practice. Still, the essence of Protestantism was a return to the spiritual essence of Jesus’ teachings divorced from paganesque idolatry(the result of syncretism of Christianity with Roman paganism and even elements of Germanic paganism) and the institutionalized power of Church bureaucracy manned, especially at the top, by clergy with close associations with the rich and powerful(like the Medicis or the fictional Corleones). With Catholics, wine and wafers(bread-like crackers) could be the blood and body of Jesus Himself. Holy Water, when sprinkled on a demon-possessed girl, could make her cuss and vomit. Catholic women held onto Rosaries like security blankets. Entire buildings could be blessed or sacred. Among Orthodox folks, possessing a certain icon was like having a prized baseball card worth big bucks. Poles have a thing for the Black Madonna(not to be confused with mudshark madonna), one of the most sacred objects for them both historically and spiritually.
In contrast, Protestant denominations had either far less need or no need at all for such ‘trifles’ that were either considered to be distracting or condemned as idolatrous superstition.

It is understandable why Protestantism caught on more in the North than in the South. Not only was Martin Luther a German but the North had a meager legacy in High Paganism. In ancient times, paganism in the South meant the awesome achievements of Greco-Roman civilization, whereas paganism in the North meant fur-clad ruffians drinking mead, sharing wash-basins, and acting like Conan the Barbarian. So, Catholicism was proud to develop as a fusion of High Paganism and High Spirituality. The North, lacking such a rich pagan legacy, was bound to feel envious. This isn’t to say Martin Luther and his followers weren’t sincere in their moral dissent against the Church, but it couldn’t have been an accident that Protestantism spread most fervently among the Germanic folks. Being poor in cultural legacy vis-a-vis the European South, they sought compensation via greater purity in spiritual devotion. After all, the spirit is the great equalizer. As Jesus said, a poor man who is good of heart is richer in spirit than the richest man who is weak in faith.

The result of Protestantism was a devaluing of the sacredness of objects. So, one shouldn’t seek sacred value in things, buildings, and possessions. Spirituality could only be found through the heart. It was a matter of the soul. Thus, the world, having been detached from spirituality, could be seen with a clearer, more empirical, pair of eyes. A thing was just that thing than some ‘blessed’ or ‘cursed’ object. (Perhaps, a latent force in English Romanticism was a neo-quasi-Catholicist vision of the world as filled with sacredness in enraged reaction to the Industrial Revolution set off by empirical use of science, technology, and economics.) In Andrei Tarkovksy’s Orthodox worldview, even dead things can be imbued with the ‘miracle’. Even if Tarkovsky didn’t literally believe in hocus-pocus, his way of seeing the world was steeped in the Orthodox view of the world of God’s creation and the latent paganist view of Mother Russia. So, even though THE SACRIFICE is set in Protestant or post-religious Sweden, it is characterized by a Slavicist world-view of salvation-redemption-reclamation through faith not only in God but in the sanctity of things. The final image is of a child who waters a dead tree in the hope that it will come to life. Of course, it’s impossible, and Tarkovsky knew it himself, but there’s a sense that without such hopes and dreams, mankind is lost, surrounded by objects devoid of spirit. (This idea was transposed, ridiculously I think, to BLADE RUNNER 2049 where we are supposed to believe that android Rachel underwent some kind of ‘miracle’ in giving birth to a kibbler, LOL.) In Tarkovsky’s penultimate film NOSTALGHIA, his alter ego, a Russian expatriate in Italy, clearly feels more at home near Church ruins and with a madman than with modernity and modern people. The lost world of Catholic structures and traditions reminds the main character of Mother Russia, parts of which managed to survive materialist communism. But capitalism is materialist too, and the Russian expatriate cannot relate to the ‘liberated’ Italian woman who serves as his guide. Modernity reveres nothing but the instant demands of the self. He later encounters a madman who, though clearly unbalanced and even dangerous, is touched by a moral-spiritual vision beyond the material and sensual wants of day-to-day existence. To Tarkovsky, the threat of Nuclear War wasn’t only about countless lives lost, ruined environment, and fallen economies. It is an act of crime against God, against all that is holy. It's an extension of his take on the mind-planet(or soul-planet) in SOLARIS. It is seen as a heavenly repository of memories, dreams, remorse, and longing that make up the human soul. Therefore, it must be left alone than intruded upon and 'abused' by science-and-technology in search for ‘material’ truth.



While there is great beauty in the Catholicist and Orthodox vision(albeit more subdued and somber) of the sacredness of things of the world and the world itself, it is a form of mega-idolatry in affixing spirituality to materiality. If spirit is beyond body and things, why should it be so powerfully manifested in tangible things, especially when the Genesis speaks of the Original Sin and the fall of Eden? And didn’t Jesus stress the heart above all else? He wasn’t impressed by palaces, fancy dress, arts & culture, and monuments. He didn’t much care for Jewish rites and rituals. (One wonders if Judaism would have developed into something closer to Catholicism — a syncretism of idolatrous paganism and spiritualist faith — IF the Jews had been allowed to remain in Jerusalem. Herod, a collaborationist overlord with the pagan Romans, was a great builder who spent lavishly on making the Jewish World resemble something like the Vatican or Mecca. But Jews were soon thereafter driven into exile, and their religion could survive only as a matter of blood, spirit, and word. In a way, they had to become more Protestant-like. Their wealth had to be conceived of as a kind of 'spirit' of financial matter, as free-flowing currency.) Nor did Jesus think less of others because of dress, wealth, status, or health. According to Christianity, the ugliest, most wretched, and most foul-looking creature is nobler than the most beautiful, richest, and reputable(by prevailing social standards) person IF the former is devoted to God and Truth while the latter is obsessed with one’s own fame & fortune. So, the spirit is not to be judged by body, material forms, and adornments.
Spirit is also deeper than the Word that could be used charlatans and Devil himself. After all, the Serpent used words to entice Eve into eating from the Tree of the Forbidden Knowledge. While God communicates His message through words to the Prophets, truth is deeper than words. (Also, as God grows more silent in the later passages of the Bible, His voice/words aren't so much to be heard through the ears than discovered from the wellspring of the soul.) It’s like Socrates warned against pseudo-philosophers who are clever in their use of words but devoid of integrity and meaning. Thus, there is a sense in Protestantism that the deepest prayer is not about songs/music or spoken prayers but silence itself. Though Martin Scoresese’s THE SILENCE is based on a novel by a Japanese Catholic author Endo Shusaku, it’s interesting that the protagonist finds a deeper truth in the dark silence so far removed from the comfort zone of Catholic Spain. While in Spain, every Church, every hymn, every prayer, every ritual, and every sermon assured the priest of the rightness of God and Jesus. It is away from such comfort zone that the priest is confronted with the possibility of either the absence of God or the weakness of his faith(or the uselessness of his faith to do any good for the suffering Converts). He went from a world where Christian Godliness is a symphony filling up every square inch of space to a world of Silence where the Faith is concerned. Silence can mean absence but can also suggest the need to dig deeper until a well is struck and the water starts to flow once again.

Protestantism has a better grasp of the significance of this Silence because, ideally speaking, a Protestant is not to be distracted by the physical manifestations of holiness, which are to be rejected as forms of idolatry. And some Protestant sects were even distrustful of music as overly sensual — the Taliban would have agreed — and recited their hymns in rhythmic verse than in song. In BABETTE’S FEAST, we see the muted clash of cultures between the French woman who can cook up a feast for the senses AND a small Danish Protestant community that is accustomed to a spartan & stoic existence(though to be sure, the contrast is also between urban and rural). Babette is a contradiction of sorts. She’s sympathetic to the Revolutionaries, but her talent in the culinary arts is downright royal-aristocratic. (In a way, the French Revolution had themes similar to Luther’s rebellion against the overly corrupt and ostentatious Catholic Church. Especially Robespierre was quasi-Protestant in his puritanical insistence and radical commitment to the Revolution. As a movement that would bring about justice for common folks, his revolution was against the entirety of Catholicist-Aristocratic tradition that had brought forth so much glory and beauty[as well as pomposity and arrogance] to French Culture.) Babette is a refugee from the Counter-Revolution that restored the haute privileges of the French aristocracy that made possible the fancy cooking she specializes in. After all, your average French peasant or worker for most of history never ate fancy French cooking, no more than an average Chinaman ate Mandarin dishes fit for an emperor. To stay on the straight and narrow path, one must not only direct one’s gaze at the true prize — spiritual union with God — but be mindful not to fall into temptation of worldly pleasures that makes people value the temporal over the eternal.

Protestantism’s insistence on purity and simplicity in the practice of Faith had wider cultural ramifications. A spiritual-moral culture that disdained glitter-n-glamour in religious expression was bound to affect all spheres of life, especially as religion was the moral core of traditional European culture. Thus, keeping things moderate, modest, and restrained in strict adherence to the true spirit of the God and Jesus was bound to favor things that were less colorful and flavorful in art & architecture, dress & design, music & dance, and food & wine.
Given this reality, one might think the Catholic societies would have spearheaded the economic explosion that came to be known as the Industrial Revolution. After all, if Protestant sensibility is about moderation and self-denial, why would there be a need to produce more and more goods? After all, the Spartan economy was smaller than that of the Athenian economy that was far less restrained in goods and services. Athenians loved to trade and sought out ever greater trade routes. Athenians loved to create, possess, and display glorious and beautiful things. Spartans interacted with non-Spartans only to the extent that it was necessary to maintain Spartan power and local hegemony.

If Catholics were less restrained than Protestants in their taste for glamour-n-glitter(so opulently on display in the Catholic Church), wouldn’t such a culture of ‘avarice’ and ostentation have kicked off a culture of mass consumption? After all, whenever Latin folks, whether in Europe or South America, got a bit of cash, they were far less hesitant to spend it on food, clothing, jewelry, and etc. Latin America was far less developed than North America, but the Latin American rich loved to make a big show of their wealth and privilege, like the Sosa character in SCARFACE. Or consider the crass Evita Peron.

Perhaps part of Che Guevara’s appeal was he was such a severe and spartan figure among the Latins. In a way, Marxism-Leninism was a secular Protestantism for the Latins. The modern world was too ‘enlightened’ for religious faith, and so, the educated reformers and radicals no longer put their faith in God. As such, it would have made little sense for them to convert to Protestantism to combat the entrenched corrupt system of the alliance among the monarchy, oligarchy, and the Catholic clergy. So, what was there as a purifying fire? Marxism-Leninism that called for the renunciation of wealth and privilege in the name of Justice for the Salt of the Earth. Granted, Catholic Church had long emphasized the need to take care of the poor, but the have-nots were regarded with condescension. Also, the idea was that the poor should not complain, remain meek, and hope for charity from the Church funded by crumbs from the corrupt rich. So, why not eradicate all that with the Revolutionary Fire?

The fact that Mussolini won in Italy and Franco won in Spain(and the fact that most of Latin America was ruled by right-wing oligarchs and quasi-fascists) suggests that the Latin character generally favors flavor and flamboyance over sparse and spartan commitment to truth & justice. And even Fidel Castro, despite his communist victory in Cuba, borrowed a style that was closer to Mussolini than Lenin or Stalin. Also, the ‘left’ that finally triumphed in Spain was Homomania, a neo-religion that even outdid the Catholic Church in pageantry and spectacle. The face of Spanish ‘progress’ has been what? The movies of Pedro Almodovar. Well, whoopity poopity-doo.


And what accounted for the success of Hugo Chavez? He didn’t call for more sacrifice and hard work, as Che Guevara had done. Instead, flush with oil money, he promised festival-para-todos. And it wasn’t long before Che Guevara was turned into an icon for every kind of ‘bling’. Che’s severe spartanism — he thought the North Korean model that marched people to and from work was the ‘most impressive’ — suggests that he was well-aware that the Latin Way had failed in contrast to the Yanqui Way. Of course, his Latin pride was loathe to admit that it had less to do with Northern exploitation of the South(in Europe and Americas) than with different modes of thought, values, and behavior. Still, he obviously felt that something radical was necessary in order to defend and develop Latin America independent of Yanqui imperialist meddling. And he thought the answer lay in what he called Moral Incentive, his own version of the Protestant Work Ethic. If an entire people devoted themselves to self-sacrificing hard work for the common good, they could catch up to the capitalist West and spread their model as the ideal one for all the world. But what Che Guevara, along with so many leftist radicals, failed to understand was that the success of the Anglo-Germanic North had to do with a strange combination of Self-Denial and Individual Ambition. This blend wasn’t easy to come by because it necessitated the melding of two conflicting and seemingly incompatible thought systems. After all, Protestantism stressed, far more than Catholicism, the virtue of the simple life, self-restraint & self-denial, moderation, and thrift. But how could such virtues ever lead to much wealth? For one thing, it led to a culture of higher conscience that led to a culture of greater trust that was an advantage to contracts and business. Also, the focus on virtue meant a stronger will to do a good job. Just as one had to serve God with purity of heart, one had to apply one’s skills to work with conscientiousness. This did wonders for productivity(which must precede consumption, as in the ant-and-grasshopper story). Moderation meant less likelihood of revelry and other self-destructive behaviors that could blow away one’s earnings or lead to dissipation that gnaws away at Work Ethic. Thrift also meant saving more for a rainy day than spending for here-and-now(and this necessitated access to foreign markets as the domestic market remained suppressed by the ideal of thrift and self-discipline, surely one reason why the Brits were eager to sell opium to the Chinese but not to their own kind). Also, the notion that one’s relation to God was essentially direct and personal was bound to have a liberating effect on the individual. If faith is a matter of individual conscience than of institutional dogma, then one could stand taller before God. Obviously, the Protestant North didn’t plan any of these outcomes, but they did result from ‘accidental’ intersections and interactions of various, often clashing, outlooks and modes of thought.

But it is possible that the economic rise of the North also owed to the de-mystification of the material world as the result of Protestant influence. Under such conditions, people are more likely to take a cold and hard-nosed look at reality. Indeed, consider Italy and UK in the 1920s and 1930s. Great Britain was far more powerful than Fascist Italy, but Mussolini put on a good show to impress the world. He acted as if the Roman Empire was back when, in fact, Italy was a paper tiger that, when push came to shove, couldn’t even defeat Greece. The humiliated Italians had to be bailed out by Germans who did the invasion of Greeks and then pretended the Italians were lords over Greece. Fascist Italy was not the Roman Order that had once easily conquer its neighbors. But why were so many Italians so willing to fall for Mussolini’s grand delusion and swindle? Why was Mussolini himself so prone to fall for his own myths? Why did the later Fellini coast on his stale razzle-dazzle phantasmagoria to prop up the myth of his genius that had all but faded? Amusingly enough, JULIET OF THE SPIRITS is everything that it attacks. It mocks Catholic Church’s culture of hyperbole & hysterics that instilled innocent young girls with sexual complexes, but the entire film is a shameless ritual of props and stagecraft as substitute for art and meaning. Likewise, FELLINI SATYRICON’s condemnation of the excesses of pagan Roma could just as easily apply to Fellini himself who had, by then, become the absurd Nero among film-makers. For a more sincere delving into truth, there were the Swedish greats Ingmar Bergman and Jan Troell. To many people, Bergman may be most well-known for FANNY AND ALEXANDER, his most Fellini-esque film, but his artistic reputation rests on the stark b/w films of the 50s and 60s. And it’s difficult to think of a more honest film-maker than Troell who worked on his films like a wood-carver with a log, sure and steady. Granted, Catholic Italy also produced neo-realism, Roberto Rossellini, and Ermano Olmi. And Robert Bresson the French Catholic made some of the most stylistically austere films ever, as different from Fellini, Bertolucci, Leone, and Ophuls(Jewish) as the films of Carl Dreyer are. Still, one can help but notice certain general tendencies among cultural sensibilities. It seems fitting that Fellini was Italian than Swedish and Bergman was Swedish than Italian.

Does any of this matter anymore in our globalized world where all of Europe seems to be coming under the mono-culture of Judeo-Afro-Homo domination? Is there a culture of Work Ethic anymore in Great Britain where too many young people act like loutish boors and feel no shame about getting drunk and falling all over the streets? Is there any meaningful difference between the French and Americans when most French kids grow up listening to Rap and watching Hollywood movies? Do blacks in France conform to French culture or to globalized American culture where the only things that matter are Jewish chutzpah, Negro muscle & music, and homo vanity & narcissism? With the ongoing Africanization of Sweden, a nation already remade by demented feminism, homomania, and cuckery, would it make sense to even speak of a distinct Swedishness in decades to come, especially when many Swedish elites insist there is no such thing as ‘Swedish Culture’ and appoint idiotic non-Swedes to be caretakers of national heritage? Maybe not, but the lingering differences between the European North and European South can still be traced back to the contrasting cultural legacies(as well as genetic factors as Southern Europe tends to be mixed partly with North African and/or Near Eastern blood AND as Eastern Europe tends to be mixed more with Turkic and/or Asiatic blood). Of course, Europe a hundred years from now could be a very different place given current demographic trends. Most of Western Europe, from top to bottom, could become like a big version of Morocco. Eastern Europe might avoid such fate if it holds onto its current nationalist mode, but even Eastern Europe fails to understand that the biggest threat comes not from the Muslim world but from the black African world. But because of PC that lionizes blacks as Special Victims(along with Jews and homos), there is a rhetorical reluctance to address the issue of saving Europe from ghastly ‘groids’. After all, while it’s still permissible in the globalist media to speak ill of Muslims, raising alarms about blacks is akin to ‘antisemitism’ or 'homophobia'. It is Taboo. Furthermore, due to American cultural hegemony(which is basically Jewish, Homo, and Negro), many people in Eastern Europe sincerely have an overly romanticized and favorable impression of blacks as both the most Noble Race and the Coolest race. So, even as Poles make big noise about defending their nation from Muslims, they go out of their way to prove that they are ‘progressive’, ‘tolerant’, ‘anti-racist’, and onboard with ‘Western Values’ by welcoming and celebrating ACOWW or Afro-Colonization of White Wombs. THAT could be the undoing of Poland. Because Jews control the media, Narrative, and Idolatry-Iconography, they get to decide which groups are most protected by taboos and most blessed with secular sacraments.

Anyway, the Protestant North, with its de-mystified view of the world, was bound to focus more on real work and real wealth. Since the world around them could not be prized as magical or miraculous, it could only be assessed in material terms. A factory had material value in producing stuff. And stuff had material value as weapons, ships, trains, and machines. In the end, it was Prussian hardware that overwhelmed Austro-Hungarian grandeur. The Austrians had nice palaces and cathedrals. To the naked eye, the Austrian world would have seemed more awesome. But when it came down to actual battles, victory was decided by better soldiers, better discipline, better weapons, and better transport. Material Substance always wins over Magical Style.

Protestantism allowed for higher conscience of mind and harder concentration of matter. The Protestant mind tended to be less ‘superstitious’, less bound to matters of style. It was more matter-of-fact and cold-eyed in the assessment of power and value. The Chinese and Hindus were also slower to modernize because their world-views were wrapped up in magic, mysticism, and ‘superstition’. Hindus literally believed in the existence of a million gods that animated the universe; they believed that all of life was governed by this force called Karma. And for the Chinese, the idea of Tao was not just a metaphor but a real forced that maintained balance in the world. And they believed that the rulers of China, with the Mandate of Heaven, were divinely ordained to sustain the harmony in what they considered to the Middle Kingdom. With such magical force favoring China, there was no way that a bunch of Anglos, seen as a race of pirates, could do anything real to harm China. But then, there was a series of rude awakenings. Because the Chinese/Manchu elites were secluded in their own la-la-land inside the Forbidden City, they’d developed a habit of favoring fantasy over reality like Elvis Presley in Graceland and Michael Jackson in Neverland. So, how did such an elite deluded with so much mysticism manage to rule over such a vast imperial kingdom for so long? Because the fantasy was shared by a vast bureaucracy and also by the masses of minions whose social habits and emotional tendency were toward servility, conformity, and superstition. Collective fantasy buttressed elite fantasy. It appears some peoples/cultures are more prone to fantasy. Consider the Magic Realism of Latin American writers and film-makers like Guillermo Del Toro(that vile piece of turdez).

So, there were obvious advantages to being part of the Northern Protestant order. Indeed, even much of Russian modernization and industrialization in the late 19th century and early 20th century owed to German engineers, managers, and military personnel. As for France, its fate increasingly became sandwiched between Protestant UK and Protestant Germany that fast outpaced France in heavy industry.
And in the New World, the Protestant North America outshone Catholic Latin America in almost every respect. (Perhaps, certain Latin American nations held their own at least in literature.) For the Northerners, spirituality belonged to the realm of soul whereas materiality belonged to the world of matter. There was less confusion on such matters as the two realms was segregated in a kind of mental caste system. If you wanted Salvation and Redemption, you prayed with your soul to God. If you wanted to make it in the material world, you needed to make real empirical discoveries, build things of genuine utility, or accumulate real wealth backed by legal contracts. There was little room for hocus-pocus ‘superstition’ that confused materiality with spirituality.

Granted, this didn’t necessarily mean a lack of imagination, as the British excelled in literature and fantasy genre. But the magical and mythical were reserved for the world of fiction. They were understood to be imaginary. At best, they could be poetic or visionary, but they were still not real. Then, it is understandable why the two greatest movements of 19th century Romanticism happened in Protestant UK and Protestant Germany. Protestants were hungrier to find the magical and mythical in art, fiction, and music because their spirit world remained locked within the soul. Because the material world wasn’t imbued with magic or miracles in the Protestant world-view(as it was in the Catholic world), things had value in terms of utility and cause-and-effect. But the human mind craves for the mythic and fantastic, and for the Protestant-minded folks, such could only be imagined via the realm of fiction. Even as Protestant imagination could be expansive, there was a clear boundary between fact and fiction.
In contrast, the Catholic world-view was more ‘magic-realist’, radiant with faith in miracles in the material world all around us. Thus, if vision in the eyes of a Protestant meant a leap of imagination or insight, it could mean a divine revelation to the naked eye of a Catholic. And this made the Catholics more ‘superstitious’ and less rational on the actual worth of things. Suppose there is a sword made of inferior metal that isn’t of much use in battle BUT it’s been said to be sacred. The cult of miraculous-matter will blind the Catholic to the real (lack of)value of the sword. It’s like Alec Guinness’s character of King Feisal in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA would rather dream of the lost gardens of Cordoba and hope for miracles.


One may argue that the Protestant de-consecration(later to be followed by the secular form of Deconstruction) of the world led to horrible abuses and exploitation as the world was no longer seen as sacred. Even though the idea of the fallen state of the world is intrinsic to the entirety of the Biblical text, there was nevertheless a modicum of miraculousness in the Jewish and Catholic view of the tangible world, even if, paradoxically enough, for opposite reasons. The strict Jewish prohibition against idolatry and worship of graven images implies that Jews regarded God’s Creation to be so special and unique that it shouldn’t be ‘mocked’ by the creative hubris & vanity of man. In other words, don’t think Creativity can ever come near Creation. In contrast, Catholics grew attached to the miraculousness of the world by way of syncretizing Christianity with pagan idolatry. To be a Catholic means to revere the rites and rituals performed with the aid of certain holy vessels.

Unlike Jews and Catholics, Protestant world-view was barren of the miraculous(though it may also have owed to Northern Temperament shaped by long stretches of cold weather, long dark winters that seem to last forever, and overcast clouds and mist). It was not a place to pep up one’s spirits. As such, one could argue that the Protestants were less mindful of the damage they did to nature and the social order. Everything was measured in terms of utility and material advantage.
And yet, the magical view of the world could also have a dark side. Consider Jewish hatred of pigs and Muslim hatred of dogs. If some things in the world could be sacred, other things could be cursed or wicked. Because Muslims have such a negative view of dogs, they treat man's best friend most terribly. And because Ultra-Orthodox Jews regard pigs as not only physically unclean but spiritually polluted, they fail to appreciate the wondrousness of pigs as our brothers and sisters.
After all, God Himself could create the world to be a holy place or set out to destroy it as a cursed place. If the world is seen magically, it could be seen as one of the ‘good witch’ or the ‘wicked witch’, as the Land of Oz. So, while magical thinking can make one better appreciate things of the world, it can also make one hate them more as well. If certain items can be considered holy and pure, other items can be considered wicked and evil. Snakes were surely a big loser in the Biblical Sweepstakes. Because of the Serpent’s role in the story of Eden, many Jews and Christians came to regard snakes as a wicked animal that should be killed at first sight. Also, magical thinking can transfer from the spiritual to the material. Think of the Conquistadores who sought out El Dorado as the City of Gold or the Fountain of Youth in the New World. Men steeped in Catholicist magical thinking sought out heaven-on-earth, as if indeed there might really be a city where streets are paved with gold or a place with water that serve man’s vanity to be forever young. So, even as a magical view of the world can allow for greater appreciation, it can also foster a superstitious outlook that can lead to loathing of so much as wicked, satanic, or cursed. After all, if a thing can be blessed by good spirits, so can it be cursed by evil spirits. And the Catholic World had more of a superstitious view of the world, and this often hampered clarity of thought necessary for rational interaction with reality.
Also, people who tend to believe in magical-materiality are prone to focus more on possession than usage. For instance, if you believe you possess a magic sword, you may be less motivated in learning how to use it. You will more likely to safeguard it in the belief that the mere ownership of the weapon empowers you and your side. But as Uther and Arthur learn in EXCALIBUR, mere ownership isn’t sufficient to be a good ruler. It’s all about why, when, and how it is used. The Japanese, with their myth of a sacred island nation protected by gods of wind and water, failed to rationally assess the danger of picking a fight with the US with a bigger population and far greater material resources(and advanced technology). Protestantism, by de-consecrating materiality, stressed the greater importance on the mastery over materiality. It wasn’t enough to own something. It was about how it can be used according to the cold hard facts of laws of physics.

At any rate, both the Catholic and Protestant worlds have lost their faith and are now under the spell of neo-pagan idolatry of Pop Culture, Homomania, and Diversity-Propaganda(aka ‘More Restaurants’, that is until the foreigners who bring new restaurants to your nation come to eventually devour your nation as feast for demographic imperialism). There is no longer any clarity in the minds of Protestants.
Also, Pop Culture has gone from being entertainment to new myths and neo-religions. Due to movies like GREEN MILE and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, there is a sense among many white folks that blacks are a sacred race, the chosen of god if not god hisself. And Oprah is like a black madonna to countless soulless moron women. Whenever someone, black or non-black, wants to sound holy-schmoly, they recite a quote from Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison(like Old Time Bible Thumpers used to recite quotes from the Bible to validate their positions). And MLK, who really should be remembered as Fartin Poother Bling, is now bigger than God. And Mandela is the holiest figure in all of Europe. And so many whites fainted left and right at the sight of Obama as The One in the 2008 election cycle.
When white folks, Catholic or Protestant, are not worshiping Negroes, they are just wild about homos and trannies. For these morally and spiritually bankrupt dufuses, the great moral theme of our age is making sure that homos get to ‘marry’ and have bakers make a ‘wedding cake’ for them. And of course, Jews, via control of media, academia, and whore politicians in governments all across Europe, have elevated themselves to a bunch of little jesuses of the Holocaust Cult. Worship the Jews, adore Anne Frank as the new madonna, build more and more Holocaust monuments, make more and more days a ‘day of remembrance’ for the Holocaust, and enforce Taboos on anyone who dares to ‘deny’ the Official Narrative of Shoah. And ANYTHING must be done to prevent another Holocaust. So, if 6 million Arabs must be killed to prevent Another Holocaust, it must be done. If 60 million Europeans must be killed to prevent Another Holocaust, it must be done. If 600 million gentiles must be sacrificed to prevent Another Holocaust, so it must be done. After all, if Jews are indeed so holy-shmoly, then a single Jewish life is infinitely more precious than any number of goy lives. Just ask the Palestinians how this logic works.

Every advantage has a disadvantage, and what had once been so advantageous to Protestantism is now a disadvantage in our post-religious world. Today, it’s fair to say that the majority of Protestants and Catholics don’t literally believe in the Bible. So, what is really left to keep the cult of faith going? At the very least, Catholicism still has its elaborate rites and rituals that provide form, guidance, structure, and spectacle. Even if one doesn’t believe in the actual creed, one can still be impressed by the grandeur and tradition. One may look upon such and feel it’s worthy of preservation because of its rich history and heritage. So, one doesn’t really have to believe-believe to find reasons to remain within the Catholic(or Orthodox) faith. There is the Tradition Thing, so rich in art, culture, and rituals.

In contrast, Protestantism staked everything on the purity of faith. So, as long as Protestants truly believed in God and the holy spirit, they had the advantage of higher conscience, devotion, and commitment. They were nearer to God as they were less reliant on the clergy as bureaucratic medium between man and God. But, what happens when the well of faith goes dry? What happens when most Protestants don’t really believe in the existence of God or aren’t really sure? Without that element of faith, Protestantism seems empty and barren. This was powerfully depicted in Ingmar Bergman’s WINTER LIGHT(aka THE COMMUNICANTS, ironically suggesting lack of communication between man and God). To a true man of faith, spirit alone may be enough or, better yet, a more effective path to God’s grace because he is unencumbered by the Magical-Materiality of Catholicism that ‘overly’ stresses the need to ‘toy’ with sacred items that a Protestant might look upon as akin to magic wands and rabbit’s foot collected by kids. But once the faith dries up, what does a Protestant have? When he believed, he could hear within the Silence the deep murmurings of God. But without faith, Silence just becomes silence, a nothingness. One can be a Catholic or Orthodox of Tradition even without literal faith in God, but it’s hard to be a Protestant of Tradition because the main stress has always been on purity of faith than on upkeep of heritage, rituals, and ceremonies(that had been kept to a minimum).

Now, an honest Protestant will just leave the faith and declare himself secular. But what about those who insist on remaining in the Church. Then, there are only two ways. One is the willfully dumb Evangelical way of saying NO to science and pretending that, yes, Noah had co-existed with dinosaurs and the world is only 6,000 to 10,000 yrs old. But to reject obvious scientific facts and cling to such willful ignorance leads to infantilization of the mind, and this is surely true of most Evangelicals, which is why they are such easy suckers manipulated by cunning Zionists.
The OTHER way is for Protestants to seek out new pseudo-sacred causes as substitute for faith in God whom they no longer truly believe. So, what remains of Mainline Protestant churches is mostly mindless commitment to fads and fashions like the neo-religion of Homomania or Queertianity(or SJC, Satanic Jewish christianity).