Why Humanity Keeps Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater
On the pattern of reaction and counter-reaction that drives human history — and the truly intelligent stance that transcends it.
The Pattern
There is a pattern woven through the whole of human history, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
Every great movement in civilization arises as a reaction against something that has become corrupt, rigid, or oppressive. The reaction identifies a real evil — and in its zeal to destroy that evil, it destroys much that was good along with it. Then the next generation inherits the wreckage and reacts again — against the reaction — and the pendulum swings.
This is the engine of historical change. Not progress. Not evolution. Oscillation. A perpetual swinging between poles, each swing carrying humanity further from the center.
The Hegelian dialectic describes the mechanism: thesis provokes antithesis, and the collision produces a synthesis — which then becomes the new thesis, provoking its own antithesis. Marx materialized this into dialectical materialism, reducing the process to economics and class struggle. But the pattern is far older and deeper than Marx. It is the rhythm of fallen humanity — the inability to hold the center, to distinguish the principle from its corruption, to keep what is true while discarding what is false.
The Great Example: The Enlightenment
Consider the Enlightenment — perhaps the most consequential reaction in Western history.
What it was reacting against:
- A Church that had become worldly, corrupt, and power-hungry
- Clerical abuse of spiritual authority for political control
- Religious wars that devastated Europe for generations
- Superstition, dogmatism, and the persecution of free inquiry
- Rigid feudal hierarchies that had long since lost their sacred character
Was the reaction understandable? Yes. Even necessary. The medieval order had degenerated. The sacred center had been hollowed out. The institutions that were supposed to mediate between Heaven and Earth had become instruments of earthly power. People were suffering under the weight of a dead form that no longer carried living spirit.
What the reaction accomplished:
- Liberation of scientific inquiry
- Assertion of individual dignity and rights
- The end of religious persecution (in principle)
- Unprecedented material advancement
- The ideal of rational governance
What the reaction destroyed:
- The sacred center of civilization
- The vertical dimension — the connection between Heaven and Earth
- The understanding that reality is hierarchical and that the Divine is the axis of all order
- Living tradition, ritual, and the sacred calendar
- The organic community bound by covenant, myth, and shared spiritual purpose
- The understanding that there are natural hierarchies of wisdom, virtue, and spiritual attainment
The Enlightenment looked at a corrupt Church and concluded: religion itself is the problem. It looked at degenerate monarchs and concluded: hierarchy itself is the problem. It looked at dead tradition and concluded: tradition itself is the problem.
This is the fatal error of every reaction: it cannot distinguish the principle from its corruption.
It is as if a man, discovering that his water has been poisoned, concludes that water itself is dangerous — and resolves never to drink again.
The Modern Inheritance
We are the inheritors of that reaction. And the consequences are everywhere.
Religion and Spirituality
Modern people have, by and large, thrown out religion and spirituality entirely. And who can blame them? What they have seen of religion is:
- Fundamentalist literalism that insults the intelligence
- Televangelists and megachurch grifters
- Institutional cover-ups and abuse scandals
- Moralistic judgment without wisdom or compassion
- A God who is essentially a cosmic tyrant demanding obedience
They have never encountered:
- The mystical tradition — Meister Eckhart, the Desert Fathers, the Rhineland mystics, the Kabbalists, the Sufis
- Esoteric Christianity — the interior Christ, the Kingdom within, gnosis as direct knowledge of God
- The initiatory path — alchemy, theurgy, the transformation of consciousness
- Sacred art as a doorway to the Transcendent
- A spirituality that deepens rather than diminishes the intellect
They are reacting against a caricature — and because the caricature is all they know, they believe they are reacting against the thing itself. They reject "God" without ever having encountered God. They reject "religion" without ever having encountered the religio — the binding-back to the Source.
Tradition and Monarchy
The same pattern repeats. Modern people hear "tradition" and think: rigid, backward, oppressive, resistant to change. They hear "monarchy" and think: tyranny, divine right of despots, Louis XVI, absolute power.
They have never encountered:
- Tradition as the vertical axis of eternal truth — not the handing down of dead customs, but the living presence of the Sacred in time
- Sacred monarchy as the oldest and most universal political form — the Priest-King as axis mundi, the bridge between Heaven and Earth
- The Arthurian ideal — the King who serves the Kingdom, whose spiritual condition determines the health of the Land
- The difference between a sacred hierarchy (organized around spiritual attainment and the common good) and a tyranny (organized around power and exploitation)
They are rejecting the corruption of these things — and because the corruption is all they have ever seen, they believe the principle is the problem.
"Right-Wing" Ideas and Values
Perhaps nowhere is the confusion more acute than in the political realm.
The modern person hears "hierarchy" and thinks oppression. Hears "anti-egalitarianism" and thinks racism. Hears "sacred order" and thinks theocratic tyranny. Hears "tradition" and thinks reaction against progress.
This is because the 20th century produced genuine horrors that borrowed the vocabulary of hierarchy, tradition, and sacred order while gutting their spiritual content. Fascism, Nazism, and various authoritarian movements took the form of the old order and filled it with materialist, nationalist, racialist poison.
And a movement like Nazism was itself a reaction against the increasingly hollow modern world of “progress” and ……
And so the modern world, reacting against these horrors, concluded: the ideas themselves are dangerous. Hierarchy? Dangerous. Tradition? Dangerous. Sacred order? Dangerous. Any departure from egalitarian liberalism? Fascism.
This is the dialectic of reaction in its purest and most destructive form. The abuse of a principle is used to discredit the principle itself — and no one stops to ask whether the principle, rightly understood, might be the cure for the very disease they are trying to fight.
The Truly Intelligent Stance
What is needed — what has always been needed — is not another reaction. Not another swing of the pendulum. Not another revolution that destroys what it cannot understand.
What is needed is discernment.
The ability to look at a tradition, an institution, a principle, and distinguish between:
- The eternal truth it carries
- The temporal form in which that truth has been expressed
- The corruption that has crept into that form over time
And then to keep the truth, honor the form where it still serves, and ruthlessly discard the corruption — without throwing out the truth along with it.
This is not conservatism (which clings to the form even when it is dead).
This is not progressivism (which discards the truth along with the dead form).
This is not reaction (which merely swings the pendulum to the opposite pole).
This is integral discernment — the stance of the wise, the stance of the initiate, the stance of one who can see with the eye of insight and true intelligence rather than the eyes of ideology.
Examples of Integral Discernment
On Religion
- Keep: The mystical core — direct knowledge of God, the interior path, the transformation of consciousness, sacred art, contemplative practice
- Discard: Literalist dogmatism, institutional corruption, moralistic judgment without wisdom, the weaponization of guilt and fear
- Restore: The understanding that the Kingdom of Heaven is within — that religion at its highest is not obedience to external authority but the awakening of the divine within the human soul
On Hierarchy
- Keep: The recognition that souls have different orientations, capacities, and vocations — and that a healthy society reflects this natural order
- Discard: The abuse of hierarchy for domination, exploitation, racial supremacism, or the concentration of power
- Restore: The understanding that true hierarchy is sacred — organized around spiritual attainment, virtue, and service to the Whole
On Monarchy
- Keep: The archetype of the Sacred King — one whose authority flows from above, who serves the Kingdom, who embodies the axis between Heaven and Earth
- Discard: The degenerate monarch who rules by force, inheritance without merit, or divine right divorced from divine responsibility
- Restore: The understanding that leadership must be earned through spiritual transformation — not elections, not blood, not wealth, but the alchemy of the soul
On Tradition
- Keep: The vertical axis — the living connection to eternal truth, transmitted through initiatic chains, expressed in sacred art, ritual, and symbol
- Discard: Dead custom, blind repetition, resistance to genuine insight, nostalgia for a past that never existed
- Restore: The understanding that Tradition is not the past — it is the eternal present of divine order, accessible in every age to those who seek it
On Liberty
- Keep: The absolute sovereignty of the individual conscience — no man has the right to rule another by force
- Discard: The reduction of liberty to license, consumerism, or the "freedom" to be an atomized, rootless, purposeless individual
- Restore: The understanding that true freedom is alignment with one's highest nature — and that this freedom is compatible with, even requires, voluntary participation in sacred community and hierarchy
Beyond the Dialectic
The dialectic of reaction is the engine of the Kali Yuga. It is the mechanism by which truth is progressively fragmented — each reaction preserving a piece while destroying the rest, until nothing whole remains.
The way beyond the dialectic is not another reaction. It is transcendence — rising above the horizontal oscillation to recover the vertical axis.
This is, in essence, the entire project of Royal Theocracy: to stand above the pendulum, to see the eternal truth that both sides of every historical conflict are grasping at and distorting, and to restore the integral vision — the Primordial Tradition, the Prisca Theologia, the golden thread that runs through all authentic expressions of the Sacred.
The wise man does not react. He does not swing with the pendulum. He stands upon the celestial sphere — balanced, centered, sustained by the Word from above, seeing from the heart — and from that still point, he discerns.
He keeps what is true.
He discards what is false.
He restores what has been forgotten.
And he does not confuse the corruption with the principle.
"The return to Tradition is not a return to the past, but a reconquest of what was above the past."
— Julius Evola (attributed)