The enemy of my enemy is my friend

My enemy is modern (liberal Western) culture.  It is pure evil, far worse than Communism or Nazism or any of the other recent evils in history.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Who are the enemies of modern culture?

Not Christianity.  Modern culture is a deviant form of Christianity, influenced by Plato and stripped of all good Christian values.  Christianity today is either part of modern culture or is an empty shell of ritual.  There is no significant opposition to modern culture in Christianity besides some obscure backward sects like the Amish.

Islam is a true enemy of modern culture, and therefore it is my friend.  But unfortunately Islam is actually very similar to modern culture in many ways.  It is quite intolerant, almost as intolerant as modern culture is.  And it insists on imposing itself on the entire world, just as modern culture does.  And it is fundamentally anti-intellectual just as modern culture is.  Given these similarities, I cannot consider Islam as a good friend.  I am just grateful whenever Islam attacks modern culture.

White nationalists are also true enemies of modern culture, and therefore my friends.  Unfortunately they generally don't consider me their friend because they are racist and I am ethnically Jewish.  Racism is their big flaw, but otherwise they are reasonable.  They aren't anti-intellectual, aren't intolerant, and don't insist on imposing themselves on the world.

Orthodox Judaism is a true enemy of modern culture, even if they won't openly admit it.  They don't admit it because they live within modern culture while rejecting modern culture internally.  This works.  Orthodox Judaism is somewhere in between Islam and white nationalism.  Orthodox Judaism is racist and anti-intellectual, but is tolerant and doesn't impose itself on others.

And that's all.  I can't think of any other significant enemy of modern culture.

Unless one wants to be a hermit, one has to choose a culture to belong to.  The choices today are horrible, but one has to choose the least bad of the horrible choices.  And in my opinion, the least bad choice is Orthodox Judaism.  Why Orthodox Judaism?  Let's consider the issues.

Of the choices, only white nationalists aren't anti-intellectual.  Modern culture, Islam, and Orthodox Judaism are all anti-intellectual.  But unlike modern culture and Islam, Orthodox Judaism is tolerant.  This means that while Orthodox Jews aren't intellectual themselves, they will tolerate intellectuals.  Modern culture and Islam cannot tolerate intellectuals.  Therefore we can disqualify Islam.

The other big issue is racism which both white nationalism and Orthodox Judaism share.  But unlike white nationalism, Orthodox Judaism provides a loophole with its Noahide concept.  Someone who fails to meet the racial criteria of Orthodox Judaism can still be part of the community without having to obey the rules of the Talmud by being a Noahide.  There is nothing equivalent to this in white nationalism, so we can disqualify white nationalism for being racist without loopholes.  I should note that the Noahide loophole only works for a minority of Orthodox synagogues since most Orthodox rabbis are too racist to tolerate Noahides.  So this minority of Noahide tolerating Orthodox synagogues is the least horrible choice available in the modern world, and is the one that decent people (however few we are) should choose.

I have changed my mind on this topic.  Hitler was the enemy of my enemy.  Hitler is not my friend.  One needs a minimum threshold for friendship.  What should that be?

I identified my enemy as modern culture.  I believe cultures can broadly be classified into three categories: traditional, enlightened, and decadent.  Modern culture is a typical decadent culture.  Any other decadent culture is history is no different, so all are my enemies for the same reason.

Those who hate modern culture tend to identify with traditional culture largely based on the idea that the enemy of one's enemy is one's friend, and traditionalism is the best known enemy of decadence.  But most of these traditionalists have little idea of what traditionalism really means.  I myself was guilty of this until I studied Orthodox Judaism and Islam.  So what is traditional culture?  It is intolerant, hierarchical, authoritarian, anti-intellectual, superstitious, anti-rational, and, for these reasons, usually poor.  In other words, quite far from ideal but still marginally better than a decadent culture.  But good enough to be my friend?  I think not.

Now let's look at the greatly misunderstood third category, enlightened.  Enlightened cultures are moral, rational, intellectual, tolerant, and, for these reasons, generally well off.  The usual sequence is that a culture starts as traditional.  Eventually there is some rebellion against the worst aspects of traditionalism and the culture enters the enlightened phase.  During this time, religion is still respected and in fact is analysed in more depth using rational thinking than in the other cultures.  Morality is also higher in this type of culture than any other, and you will see morality more discussed in the literature of an enlightened culture than in the other culture types.  Reason is used to question tradition, but reason only wins when it presents an extremely strong argument against a tradition.  So sensible traditions tend to survive.  The enlightened phase ends when tradition is weakened too far and so traditions disappear, then morality is lost, and then all the rest is lost and society becomes decadent.  All productive cultures in history were enlightened but the best known example is our Age of Enlightenment from the 1650s to the 1780s.  The Age of Enlightenment effectively ended with the French revolution which was the beginning of decadence (liberalism/Leftism).  From the French Revolution onwards, Western culture has been slowly transitioning from enlightenment to decadence.  By now only traces of enlightenment are left and Western society can be considered about 90% decadent.

Virtually every enlightened society went through these three steps in order: traditional, then enlightened, then decadent.  There was one strange exception, and that is the Israel of the Hebrew Bible.  What happened here is that an Egyptian prince named Moses from an Egyptian culture just beginning to transition from enlightenment to decadence decided that rather than change Egypt, which was too difficult, he would take a group of slaves out of Egypt and enlighten them.  But these slaves were mostly decadent with a bit of traditionalism and no trace at all of enlightenment.  Moses had a tough job.  What Moses chose to do was to impose an enlightened tradition on these primitive people.  He consolidated all gods into one abstract god and outlawed superstition.  He gave them sensible laws and sensible rituals to serve as traditions.  He formed a priesthood of Levites to push his religion on the people.  But all through the history of Israel, there was a battle between Moses's enlightened tradition and the various decadent traditions of the surrounding people.  Moses's enlightenment peaked under Kings David and Solomon, but then decadence too over as usual.  But the strength of Moses's system was so strong that when Israel finally fell, those Israelites following decadent ways were assimilated and disappeared but those following Moses retained their identity.  Later Israel was re-formed and then various corrupting influences, particularly Greek influence, damaged Moses's concept which degenerated into a regular traditional system.  One man opposed this degeneration, but he was crucified for it.  In the process, he gained some fame which Paul used to create yet another traditional system.  But the enlightened views of Jesus can still be found in the first three gospels, and these views formed the basis of the moral aspects of the Reformation, particularly the Puritans, and this made the Age of Enlightenment possible.  The Reformation itself was a standard example of revolt against unreasonable traditionalism, as happened in Athens, Rome, the Abbasid Caliphate, and other enlightened cultures.

So now we entering yet another Dark Age, another period of decadence.  Do we need to wait several centuries before new traditional cultures develop and then some enlightened group revolts against one of these groups to create the next enlightened culture?  Or can we try to find a shortcut as Moses did?  This is difficult, but since I feel that only an enlightened culture meets the threshold of being my friend, I think it is worth trying.