During my encounter with Nikkon, I asked him about the other things he thought about Europe:

-”You lived in Europe”, I asked “What do you think of that? What is your opinion about Western civilization?”-

-”Civilization!”, he exclaimed “Western civilization is an ersatz!”-

He emphasized the word “ersatz”. This word is of germanic origin. It means substitute, deceiver, false. After a pause, Nikkon continued.

-”Everything that is in it: the arts, sciences, philosophies, religions, is ersatz!”-

-”You truly believe there is nothing authentic, good, in the countries of Western Europe?”-

-”Nothing”, he answered, “Everything is false, empty. The only exception is Orthodoxy. But even it is hardly found in its genuine, original form.”-

After hearing that I was an Orthodox Christian, the old man made an observation:

-”You should consider yourself lucky. For there is nothing more precious in this world than Orthodox Christianity. Even with the hardship of finding it in its purest form, order everything in your life according to it”- [1]

In the modern West, the common dispute is between barbarism and civilization, good and evil, progress and backwardness and so on. Gurdjieff, extremely intelligent twentieth century esotericist, was precise in identifying that anguish of a bunch of people that have already lost any inkling of that which is understood as traditional civilization, anguish born out of the lack of a traditional worldview [Weltanschauung], which formed what Evola called “world of the agitated”, and the saga in search of “progress”, “conservation” or even “regress” [2], without realizing that, in this world of the agitated, all are running towards the same abyss, although by distinct paths.

The criticism of traditionalists, not only those from the perennialist school, as also those of religious people of a contemplative life or sages that had some contact or belonged to a traditional civilization, always leads to the same point: all the western currents and ideologies that concur amongst themselves are nothing but faces of the same degeneration. The staretz Nikkon, quoted above, was a monk from Mount Athos practitioner of Hesychasm, the silent contemplation and prayer, that while young traveled trough all Western Europe, and had the opportunity of knowing the European thought and way of life. His deception was great, and not for less: to one accustomed to life in ancient Greece [3], for example, the life of the European, be it of the academic or the simple worker, is very agitated, inconstant and full of uncertainties.

Russel Means, Sioux leader and activist for the rights of North American natives, also noted this tragedy of the European man, and went even further in his analysis of capitalism, communism, Hegelianism, Scientism and others. In this discourse, links between the Tradition of North American natives and other Traditions, such as Christianity, can be noted. For example, the critique of the excessive value given to the written word, that for St John Chrysostom showed us how degraded we are [4], the critique of the transformation of nature in private property [5], and in this point both Marxism and capitalism are similar, for both defy the natural order of things.

Obviously, such reasoning is capable of bringing up various questions and criticisms, such as: how to explain the rising of the quality of life, the technological and pharmaceutical advancement that allows the prolonging of life expectancy, or yet the unending wars fought between natives throughout the world. But all of that, if analyzed and compared coldly, shows us that problems existent among the natives were not solved by the good civilized, and also, they increased.

First of all, we not only can but should question the western man’s concept of quality of life, especially from the first world. A lot of those things that makes him proud, like the comfort of our civilization against life in nature and all its perils, are nothing but an even bigger problem. The traditionalists accuse modern man of losing the capacity of contemplation, and that might as well cease to be an accusation to become a realization: what western man is capable of contemplative practices like Hesychasm, meditation or the silent worship of North-American natives? All this comfort, built in the deviation of the natural order of things, has cost first the capacity of contemplation, and today it costs sanity. Man feels increasingly the necessity of working more to obtain more comfort, and the technological advancements that increase his comforts also make him work each time more. Disorders like ADD and diseases like depression rise annually, and the critic of the natives “drug” use does not realize that modern man is increasingly more dependent on medicines against depression, attention disorders and personality disorders. He cannot see any relation between these problems and the fact that modern man does not live in a real civilization anymore, but in a bunch of clueless, agitated people that have lost any real notion about humanity, transcendence and reality.

On the other side the native Indians from Brazil, to quote J.P. McEvoy, “it may not be progress… but who cares?” In Christian countries that were free from Charlemagne’s Imperialism, and also from the legalism of the scholastics and afterward one of humanity’s greatest tragedies, the Protestant Reform, a different vision about religion can be noted, as well as the impact of religious life of that population. The fervour of the Russians prior to the deforms of Peter the Great caused amazement even in the emissaries of orthodox Patriarchates such as from Antioch, already influenced negatively by the West from its educational exchange with Rome due to Turkish domain [6]. On the other hand on the Greek villages under Turkish occupation, where the parents did not have financial conditions for sending their children to study in the West, life was peaceful and religious, similar to Russia before Peter, for the Turkish domain was not capable of affecting the life course of people who had a real focus in life. What caused more amazement was the concentration of the children in the long divine works, that standing up prayed by the side of adults, for hours, without any complaint or agitation. Something similar to the children of natives, that listen for hours to the oral teachings of their people, as noted by professor Luiz Pontual, that crowns his explanation with a beautiful picture:

“It’s very illustrative in this respect the fact that the native Indian children from Brazil are extremely calm and even concentrated. They are capable, as we could witness in more than one occasion, of remaining for two or more hours in perfect tranquility, while adults talked or performed tasks. Such unusual trait to moderns can be understood a little if we note that an Indian, as well as a medieval peasant, follows the various moments that constitute, for example, the cycle of feeding. They help or see their parents from the preparing of the land, trough the sowing, the sprouting and development of plants, to their harvest and final preparation for eating. It’s something quite different, for example, from an unbearable hyperactive kid destroying a pack of cornflakes… or a hot-dog!”

Thus, the most reasonable orthodox like the Count Lucas Notaris preferred the turban of the sultan than the tiara of the pope, for while the Turkish domain cost only some lives one time or another and a little bit of money, the approximation of the degraded West cost the soul and the oriental way of life itself. The Turkish were not capable of altering the peaceful and religious life of the inhabitants of Anatolia and Thrace, but the western influence managed to launch Russia in the biggest darkness of their history, and soon afterwards threw Greece under the subjection of Venizelos to war and spiritual decadence, in search of so called progress. Such anguish and despair are understandable from the Westerner: he thinks he is always late, but does not know where he should arrive.

That’s why the staretz warns about where to find true Orthodoxy: orthodox life does not involve merely faith, or faith in a body of moral codes to be followed, but also a whole world view [7], that cannot exist among the degradation of modernity. Nowadays, we lament a lot when we see devotees demand the liturgy in the vernacular, priests neglecting the essentials of the tradition like cassock or beard and long hair, for we are dealing with people very near to an ideal, for it would be enough to look to some decades in the past and realize how much this is important and was alive, it was part of our everyday; while westerners are not so lucky, because they are going through a long and slow process of decadence, and have ideas that are very vague and imprecise about tradition, because life under traditional principles is something that is very far, like an abstraction or stories from a very distant past.

For those reasons, I can’t align myself or even see as a “lesser evil” currents of thought like Conservationism, that while apparently less evil than communism, is part of the same process of degradation, and is not less pretentious, for it too puts itself as the dike that stops the invasion of barbarism, when it is also a mixed child of the myth of the good civilized, that Universal Man full of self judgment, doubts, problems and solutions, always putting his dirty and full of blood hands on that which was already ordered.

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*Originally published in the Sociedade Nihilista Subterrânea Brasileira. http://brasil.anus.com/?p=125

[1] Messages From The Holy Mountain, Dr. Constantine Cavarnos, Cap. 6, pgs. 31,32.

[2] http://lasciateognisperanza.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/revolucao-e-contra-revolucao/

[3] In The Elder Ieronymos of Aegina, by Pedro Botsis (The Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Massachusetts, 2007), the author tell us the amazement of St Jerome upon arriving in Athens, after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey due to the insanities of Venizelos. The saint, upon disembarking in Athens, cried when seeing the lack of religious piety and the negligence with the spiritual life of the population that lived under Turkish domain for a long time, and remembers how life in his old village in the city of Iconium (today Konya), at Anatolia, was a lot more pious. To give a glimpse, in the small village where the staretz was raised, not only monks but also a great part of the population had the habit of practicing prayer with tears in their eyes, sometimes soaking the floor of the small and crowded churches of devotees that clamored for forgiveness and cried during the divine works.

[4] cf. I Homily about the Gospel of Saint Matthew, St John Chrysostom

[5] cf. Homilies about the Psalms, St Basil the Great; Seventh Homily about the Hexameron, St Basil the Great; About the Ecclesiastes, St. Gregory of Nyssa. One of the most startling is this homily of St John Chrysostom about the I Epistle to Timothy: *
“Are the silk clothes beautiful? Really, they are fabric produced by vermin. Their beauty is convention and human prejudice, not a natural thing. If you look a bronze coin covered by a layer of gold, rapidly admires it and says the coin is gold. Takes only the experts in the matter to show you the mistake and, with the delusion, goes the admiration. See how beauty is not in nature? The same happens with silver. If you happen to see a piece of tin, you admire it as silver, as also you admired bronze for gold. It is necessary that there are people that teach us what should be admired. The eyes are not enough to discern. This does not happen with the flowers, which are more beautiful than gold and silver. If you see a rose, you don’t need to be told that is a rose. You are able to distinguish by yourself between an anemone and a violet. The same occurs with lilies and the remaining flowers. Thus, all the gold is simply a question of prejudice. And, so that it is demonstrated that all this calamitous passion is a simple question of prejudice, it is enough for you to answer: if the emperor enacted that silver is worth more than gold, would not your love and admiration transform? See to what point we are dominated in everything by avarice and by opinion. That this is like this and that things are estimated by their rarity, not by their natural value, proves the fact that exist among us neglected fruits, that are appreciated at Cappadocia, as there are others that we estimate that have even more value in the land from where the famous silk fabric comes. The same phenomena happens in Arabia, land of perfumes and in India, mother of the precious stones. In conclusion, everything is prejudice, everything human convention. Nothing do we do judiciously, but everything at random.”

[6] cf. The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware, Part. 1, Moscow and Petersburg, 1º Ed., 1968; The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch; London, The Oriental Translation Fund, 1836, Book VII.

[7]http://tradortodoxas.blogspot.com/2008/01/o-deserto-no-quintal.html