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Silicon Age Hinduism - A defence of Hinduism and an elaboration of what Bronze Age Pervert gets right
Recently, Bronze Age Pervert caused a stir by defending the single most fleshed out faith on the planet and the only living ancestral aryan faith, Hinduism. BAP or Bronze Age Pervert is an uber popular right-wing dissident on Twitter who is anti "desert cult" and is inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche
Naturally, I saw a lot of butthurt takes since no sane religious person will ever debate religions in a logical manner as religious experiences and religions in particular work on you believing something to be totally true. What I found interesting was the idea that modern hinduism is totally detached from the vedic faith, which in itself is a motte and bailey fallacy, the person stating this believes that modern day hindusim is a different religion, therefore we can simply have a new revival and this helps you avoid giving any props to Indians given the current political climate. Another thing to note is that most of India, 80 percent or more, is Shudra (4th varna) or below; the first two varnas make up close to 10 percent of the population and only a small number in them live up to the ideals of old, religiously and genetically.
Modern India, modern South Asia are completely dysgenic hellholes with terrible human capital. India of all places, stands out here because castes ensured clusters of higher IQ people in the elites which is also why you see many Indians doing well. This is not what my argument is. Hinduism itself is a broad umbrella term for all sects that vary greatly but are driven by the ideals and beliefs in the Vedas and offshoots of such branches. Unlike an Abrahamic religion, your canon is not your holy book but your guru.
The aryans from the steppe were not white, the Vedas were not written by whites as whites or euros came into existence around the time the aryans came and mixed here. Aryans, therefore, are the ancestors to my people and you, the reader. Modern Hinduism has way too much voodoo, it does deviate from vedic ideals but the texts and the practices from said texts still live on. The human capital here kept getting worse and poorer, which meant that things like Gaudiya Vaishnavism seemed more appealing as the strict purity spiralling there can elect Krishna as Jesus, and then religious offerings and a grain-based impoverished diet could be seen as virtuous. Modern-day India is not some place I can ever defend despite being a resident; the vast majority of the people are beyond fixing and always have been. Hinduism is the faith I was lucky to be born with and I may tolerate some anti-H1B takes since mass migration is always bad, but I just cannot fathom the bad faith takes posted by online dissident Christians. Shiva worship was tpresent in the Indus Valley, so were castes, whilst aryans had varnas, which is something that ancient euros also had.
BAP get Hinduism better than most pagan dissidents and every single non hindu, plus a lot of Hindus. The aryan text, Bhagavat Gita for instance, is the most modern Hindu text that goes against the Vedas and yet I have heard podcasts where Euro nationalists who decry Christ for being brown talk about the Gita being an example of aryan virtue, failing to realise that Lord Krishna was dark. So was Lord Ram who by all accounts was the physical manifestation of Dharmik values.
Their skin colors may have been different, darker or fairer, it is irrelevant to their divine status. The central argument is that these people, upon falling out with their Abrahamic faith, look to the past and cannot deny the appeal of the most fleshed-out aryan faith. Saying anything good about Hindusim without asterisks means saying good things about Indians who unfortunately, do not have the best stock today, so claiming that all good things in HInduism were pre-Puranas (a lot of puranas are fan fiction btw, not all though) or that the current population has negligible traces of the past ones is a way to avoid falling into that box. Since conservatism is in many cases a retvrn to values, you have a hard time going against Christianity, which, if you can manage it, always leads to ancestor worship.
Modern-day Hinduism is not totally Voodoo, despite all the mountains of trash, outdated superstitious beliefs, the shaktipithas and the chosen few temples are alive. Modern India bends towards the pajeet stereotype more and more, even for those of higher birth, it still is the only surviving aryan religion. India was poor and backwards during medieval times; a lot of seasoned euro intellectual giants had a lot of admiration for our texts and scholars. Goethe was inspired heavily by Kalidasa.
I was 19 when I came across Curwen Ares Rolinson, who was a far-right youth leader on trial for hate crimes. He experienced a divine intervention and dedicated his life to the study of aryan faiths and started writing for his blog Arya Akasham, much of it makes little sense to me, but he persuaded me to look into theology. As a token of his appreciation, he parted away with a large amount of his life savings to help India during COVID, a loving gesture that I will forever appreciate. I came across him via survivethejive, who, of all the white pagans I know, is the most respectful towards Hinduism, since, despite a sane anti migrant stance, he can see what a living faith like that of his people could look like today and respect it. Anti Indian sentiment is at an all time high for multiple reasons including bad faith behavior from Indians, I am not trying to touch on that topic since I cannot justify sentiments against fellow indian passport holders, but I can never defend things like chain migration and seeing the nation that accepts you as a special economic zone to be exploited. I just want to dispel the myths around Hinduism being a white religion, as it predates whites and many other ethnicities, and the other false belief stapled with it, which is that the link between modern and Vedic Hindus is non-existent, as there are large enough pockets of real beliefs that exist. I see some of those things in my own life, and they are just divine.
I am not here to defend Hinduism against logical arguments. If you ever want to know if it's true, meditate, and you will experience what truth feels like. We are a dying people, but I have faith in Shiva, and I pray for the benefit of all beings.
P.S. will add links in a bit
The Aryans from the Steppe were white and commonly descended from Corded Ware culture along with the majority of European cultures, including the Italo-Celtic, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic languages. The Aryans are genetically closest to modern-day Northern Europeans. It's a cope from Indian Nationalists that they were not white.
This is not to say the development of Hinduism was purely white or that Hinduism is a white religion, neither of which I believe. But the Aryans were white.
They see a religion that ultimately precipitated the degeneration of the ruling caste and the dysgenic hellscape that followed. The caste system was implemented too late. There are important lessons there but there's certainly not a religion to follow. Although I also have criticisms of Christianity, and there's a lot Christians who IMO don't have a lot of credibility to be hostile towards Hinduism given what they themselves worship.
Greek/Roman paganism is a way better inspiration for those people than Hinduism.
Edit: To provide some more data on the first point...
David Reich described the Aryan invading population in 2019:
And the remaining 10% was of West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer origin, a population which is similar to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers.
That ethnic composition is nearly identical to modern Northern Europeans (note "Earthly Neolitic" == European farmers).
In comparison, even among the Brahmin, >70% admixture from the Indus Valley and the indigenous Andamanese.
Obligatory /pol summary of the question.
The white race as we see it has aryans as a large part of their own heritage but facial [ reconstruction itself doesn't make them look like the [blue eyed blonde haired people you would see in discussions.] (https://www.razibkhan.com/p/steppe-20-swipe-right-on-a-steppe) Not denying that they were paler than South Asians, but still swarthy.
The biggest mistake was letting the underclass flourish, castes or jatis are an indus valley thing, varna is what aryans had which is why you had similar systems in ancient germanic lands, I'll have to go through some survivethejive for references for that.
Unfortunately the decline here has been quite steep, it would have been worse under Islam or Christianity since there would have been no castes, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan all show how bad that could have been.
You can't pick and choose these things. The germanic faith was much closer to what we worship here than the Greek for instance. If you are of an Indo European heritage and worship your ancestors, you can never ignore the most developed faith in that pantheon, also the only alive one.
Tom Roswell who runs survivethejive shows an amazing amount of restraint towards Hindus, unfortunately the bad comments he gets are mostly from 80 iq people who hate him for bringing up the Aryan Invasion, even though it doesn't change religious beliefs one whit, beyond making the othering the upper castes. He still defends Hindus and Hinduism because he too can recognize the importance of its existence, despite sustained efforts to kill off ploythiesm.
Modern Indians, vast majority are not representative of those who are worthy of their heritage, the aesthetics around us are terrible. Which needs to change.
There's a huge divide among "neo-pagans" between Greek/Roman interpretation and Norse paganism.
But the vast majority of the sources we have on Norse paganism are very late, post-Christian, and preserved (and thus filtered) through Christian sources. Take a figure like Odin who appears to be heavily influenced by Christianity - as is well known Odin was hung from a tree. Odin himself is a trickster, appears to be more of a (Christian-influenced) archetypical confabulation of Jupiter and Saturn. Norse paganism may have developed as a sort of temporary bridge between the two traditions.
In contrast, the proto-indo-european "Sky Father", Dyeus Phter, the seat of the gods, is very clearly transmitted in the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter. Of course Jupiter derives from the Proto-Indo-European compound Dyeus Phter- "sky-father" or "shining father". The lack of an unequivocal solar chieftain god in Norse paganism stands out here. There's also strong evidence for such tribal organization in Greek society.
My own curiosity in these questions pertains to the interactions between myth and genetic evolution. Hinduism would be an example par excellence for the extremely underappreciated interaction of the two, but it's not a good example of the preservation of proto-indo-european religion. I still think Greek/Roman paganism is the best we have on that front.
I humbly disagree, the view of the afterlife and the eddic texts clearly display shared ancestry with the values we deem holy. Also, most of these people are of germanic stock by definition, if you are to be influenced by another group of ancestor worshippers, you're bound to find the values of the much more fleshed out one than that which differs and is also dead. Amlteh and Achilles are two very different examples, though I have not read the odyssey so my perception might be incorrect or incomplete.
Not calling Greeks or Italians non white here, the religious perspective isn't simply limited to a sky father existing. Dayus Petr is a diety in all Indo European faiths but they still differ a lot.
It's just begging the question though- according to ancient myth the colonizers who constructed the temples to Apollo at Delphi and Delos were the race of hyperboreans emerging from the northern-most land in existence. Of course Apollo himself represents a Northern European phenotype and physical ideal- Apollo was called "the most Greek" by the Greeks themselves. It points to a common ancestry with the warring tribes that did the same on the Italian peninsula- as foundational colonizers. An important element of those myths was to preserve lineage of the noble class, with the issue being much more pressing and therefore developing differently in modern-day India.
In contrast, the earliest archeological reference to Odin ever is the 5th century AD, centuries after the development of Christianity. But we know Tyr was worshiped for thousands of years before that before being eclipsed by Odin. The Edda was written in Medieval times, hundreds of years after Christianity. Norse Paganism is not a better representation of pre-Christian Germanic worship, given it was established after Christianity and was clearly influenced by Christianity. Greek/Roman paganism remains the supreme representation of pre-Christian, European worship.
The people from aristocracy here have notably higher amounts of steppe ancestry, though phenotype isn't a 1 to 1 with your genotype. The attempts at a preservation of a nobility were carried out here in a much stricter sense.
Norse Paganism isn't that Christian though, the idea that all of what we see in their folklore is heavily inspired by Christianity cannot be true for all of their folklore. Tom has listed plenty of them in the work he does with his own revival and many go agaisnt Christian values. It includes Anglo mythology as well.
Its unfortunately dead and still differs from innate values many live by. They can't draw inspiration from that which is forgotten and also isn't appealing. My central theme is that the values they find within texts found south of the Indus are appealing because they carry the sMe same values they wish for which they cannot find in Christianity and also in Greek lore, which is also why the modern revival movement, the non larpy parts lean towards germanic myths.
Right and that's my point. There's very clearly a modus operandi in what you could call "Aryanism." This is well embodied in Greek/Roman religion, I agree it is very influential in Hinduism, but Norse mythology is something clearly different.
But if you're trying to understand European, pre-Christian worship then I am very hesitant to look towards a religion in which the central figure was created after Christianity and very obviously influenced by Christianity. And the most important texts were written a thousand years after Christianity and preserved/transmitted (potentially even subversively editorialized) through Christian sources.
I don't disagree with your opinions much, it's quite hard to find any sources that are untouched, beowulf for instance is said to be heavily inspired by Christianity.
I don't agree fully with Norse mythology being substantially different, I can't discuss that in detail since I'm not as caught up on the scriptures, not do I know any real Norse Pandits if they even exist now.
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