The Revolutionary

If Facebook is good for anything, it is the fact that it does expose us to many different ideas from those folks we become “friends” with. With over 1100 of those virtual friendships, I receive, perhaps, half a dozen good references on thought provoking material, every year. Recently, one good referral came my way, about the work of a gentleman by the name of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. His pen was prolific. One of his opuses is titled, Revolution and Counter-Revolution. The “revolution” he addresses is the one that includes the nefarious French Revolution. However, Corrêa de Oliveira includes the Renaissance,(phase 1), the French, (phase 2), and the Russian Revolution, (phase 3) as one big revolution enduring from about 1500 to the present day, as we are still in phase 3.

Corrêa de Oliveira died in 1995, so he didn’t live to see the madness of our current era.

Lucky him.

Corrêa de Oliveira organized The Brazilian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, (TFP). There is an American version of TFP, and many others around the world. When we consider that there are 8 billion people in the world, the TFP, which is small in numbers, and big in ambitions, it has it work cut out for them. The TFP’s members are Catholic.

Reading Revolution and Counter-Revolution, for me, is a quick read. Firstly, it is formatted to be read quickly, especially if you are acquainted with the issues addressed. I like that Corrêa de Oliveira doesn’t go on and on, saying the same thing with different words. He is succinct. Yes!

I am with him on so many of his tropes. Indeed, I don’t refer to myself as a conservative, but as a traditionalist. My work in unfiltered history teaches that human beings need one another. Anthropologists and psychologists will tell you the same thing. In this, Senhor Corrêa de Oliveira is spot on.

There are some themes of his I disagree with. I can see why he includes the Renaissance as phase 1, as it is the time of the reformation. Henry VIII was a Rennie man, and the war of Christians was his baby. Being a strong advocate of looking for the causes of the effects, the Reformation was bound to happen. From the Cathars to the Inquisition, the Church was did not love their enemies.  I can never get it out of my head that the church burned Jeanne d’Arc. For bloody political reasons.

Shame, shame, shame.

The Church is made up of humans, so it is not perfect.

Back to Corrêa de Oliveira’s phases. Since I do not agree that the Renaissance is the first phase, I place the Enlightenment as #1. The ideas promulgated through the Enlightenment, placed great value on individuality. We see the results of that  in the exhaustion of the repeated attempts to figure out who one is. So much attention placed on the self creates a person always thinking of their needs. Life is all about them. Ayn Rand said so. Rand did her part in pushing this idea of individualism. Yet Rand, who was an atheist, would call herself a counter-revolutionary. The TFP would find itself in strange territory with Rand as a friend of their cause.

Just as I do with Corrêa de Oliveira, I agree with many things Rand espoused, and disagree with those I find disgraceful. I can see that atheism is reactionary, but then religions have not done themselves any favors either. A dichotomy to be sure, but that is the human condition. Thus we label so many people as schizoid or bi-polar. My definition of mental illness is a lack of balance in a person’s thinking and life. They believe too many opposing ideas.

What the world needs now is a balance. Which begins with the human being taking responsibility for himself, and in taking responsibility for others, as in family life. Balance is obtained with an understanding that life is about choices and tradeoffs. Revolutionaries do not understand this concept. They are the, do it their way, or highway, bunch.

Corrêa de Oliveira has a fondness for the Middle Ages. So do I. (I also like the ancient Egyptians.) Before the Big Revolution of individualism,  each person was a part of a family, and that was their identity. Loneliness did not exist. They had a place in life, a support system, that spread out from the family, to the religious organization, and to the people of their village or town. That is what I call the good life.

Many people think of the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages. That is s because much of what we think we know about the Middle Ages is filtered through leftist interpretations. Leftists have much self-loathing, so they hate their ancestors. They have to make up horror stories about them to give themselves the lie that they, modernists, are so much better than the folks that got them here.

The feminists are the worst of this bunch. When they look back, they interpret women’s lives as some sort of prison life scenario. So much poppycock is associated with the history of women that I want to slap faces when I hear one of these modernist females speak. Poor things, they are frightened, and in denial of the actual power they have.

Modernist lefties cannot allow any individual to have power. So they shove fear onto plates. Joy is never an option with a modernist.

Anyway, women’s lives were varied and, shall I say it, inclusive? Women worked alongside the men on farms, in shops, and in the workrooms. During the Middle ages, people lived the “all hands on deck” lifestyle. Sundays were off, and holy days with feasts were plentiful. The people of the Middle Ages had more days off than we do today.

If the TFP favors such a lifestyle, I am for it; because it is a healthy lifestyle. All those health coaches will agree with me. The psychologists might not, as “mental illness” isn’t a thing back then. Besides, the priest would hear their confessions, and that could work as well as any session with a psychologist. So being a shrink was not a good financial plan.

Medicine, is, of course, the one item we would all miss if we take a time machine back to the 13th century. The doctors of the past did their best. But what if we lived in a place that had the healthy aspects of the Middle Ages, along with modern medicine, and engineering? Am I thinking about a Utopia here?

One can dream, can’t one?

Corrêa de Oliveira’s penchant for the Middle Ages reminds me of my own dreams of such a life. Spain, and other locations in Europe,  sell entire old

villages that have emptied out. One group I read about that bought one of those old villages, turned it into an enterprise that makes bread, organically, or the “old” way, and sells it to restaurants and grocery stores. They also teach classes in organic cooking. The group’s purpose was to live a traditional lifestyle.

Bravo. They became counter-revolutionaries just by living the life.

Corrêa de Oliveira’s call to action was to be in the revolutionaries faces with counter-revolution ideas. I do think being bold is called for, but we are a human population that has gone way beyond the ideas and lifestyles of 1995, when he died. We live in a world that gives an individual drugs, and surgery, to “self” actualize as some other sex. We accept same sex marriage, polyamorous relationships, serial monogamy, women raising children without a husband, no-fault divorce, and we treat unmarried couples as though they were married. It is acceptable for someone to live their entire lives alone. It is acceptable to work 18 hour days. Thousands openly admit they prefer animals to other people. Many feel sorry for thieves, drunks, murderers and those who shit in the subways. Men and women, in some degree of madness, wander the streets, sleep on the sidewalks, murder in a meth rage, and curse anyone who attempt to help them. All these behaviors are a part of the modern landscape. So-called leaders don’t even attempt remedies, and in some places, encourage such deranged dances in the midst of our cities.

No, we don’t need a counter-revolution, we need a grand upheaval.

It is when we review our present world madness, that some of us start to pray that God visits us with a terrible calamity, a la Sodom and Gomorrah, to wipe the slate clean. Is that a revolution? No, that is a quickie cleansing that is followed by a long haul back to some sort of civilization. Corrêa de Oliveira’s way is much gentler. Nonetheless, both outcomes would take a generation to sort itself out. I won’t live to see it.

I’ll have to stick with the counter-revolution. It gives me pleasure to strike blows for the Magical Middle Ages. It’s the fantasy I have of heaven; as a village where everyone knows everyone else, and every Saturday night, there’s a dance in the village square, where marriages are arranged, and children can find their own way home. I love wearing a cote-hardie. It is such a comfortable dress, with elegant lines, that can be dressed up or down depending on the fabric used to make it.  I’d be the old woman of the town, the one the young people take their problems to. They know I will not tell on them.

Human beings crave community. We cannot live without it. No one is an island, as Mr. Donne said. That idea isn’t revolutionary, or even profound. It’s just a fact. Senhor Corrêa de Oliveira may attribute the Catholic Church as the fountain of all civilization, and I would agree that its impact on the West is without equal when it comes to a shift in culture 2000 years back. However, if we want to talk revolution, the church itself was revolutionary. Jesus was a revolutionary. So, if we begin there, well, we have had a few revolutions, along with counter-revolutions, along the road to 2023.

As Newton said so succinctly: for every action, there is a reaction. We can look back to when our universe was created, to call it the first action. That means everything is a reaction after that Big Event. When we trace the events of the human experience, we can see the reactions. We can’t know what reaction touched off a burst of evolutionary advancement. The theory of “God’s plan” provides more questions than answers. However, the more we study the past, the more we can separate the good practices from the lousy ones. The Middle Ages had its faults, aside from lousy medicine. But that caused an effect to try and learn stuff to relieve people’s misery. The Renaissance era is the reaction that brought us many discoveries. It also brought us more religious wars. The Renaissance is now referred to as The Early Modern Period, for a good reason. Different revolutions took place at different times in different locales. It’s difficult to pin it down, date wise.

I’ve taken you to many ideas in this essay. To sum it up, we are living in madness. Yet, there are remedies. Corrêa de Oliveira is correct when he says we need to speak up. When we do, we find there are others out there who are with us in our pursuit of the traditional lifestyle. Many are not Catholic. Ergo, my call to action is to speak to anyone without using the religious fervor angle. Remember, civilization thrives on traditional practices, like marriage, family, and community. As Goethe said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

I will return to this subject at another time. It is huge, yes?