/lit/ - Literature

>>20701707
Nihilism The Root of the Revolution by Fr. Seraphim Rose

Postmodernists like Baudrillard can make accurate critiques about the flaws of modernity but it is still a dead end and they have nowhere to go.
Read Fr. Seraphim Rose!

>>20484057

The writings of Fr. Seraphim Rose, especially his personal letters here -> https://thoughtsintrusive.wordpress.com/letters-of-fr-seraphim-rose-1961-1982/.. ctrl+f some keywords, like "outward", "externals", "Anti-Christ", "convert" and such. There are other articles in Orthodox Word he published about this, but I can't think of how to link to them at the moment.

He touches on the phenomena of LARPing, especially among clergy. Some LARPers are attracted to him, because he warns about liberalism, globalism, ecumenism, and syncretism, but they ignore the equally scathing warnings he gives of being a trad LARPer, and him and others in his lineage make it clear that the Anti-Christ will not be a liberal - the Anti-Christ will be everything the Trad LARPers are clamouring for.

Religious LARPing isn't exclusive to converts, either - most people raised in religious faiths are LARPing and going through the motions, since they're just fed to the corporate wolves. Most cradle believers end up thinking that their faith is just an ethnic, political thing, and so will support their Churchs structure without caring at all about the holy ascetics and elders who prove that all this politics is vain. So, for both converts, and those raised in the faith, they are exposed to a world where everyone's default mode of operation is politicised, social media, appearance and "optics" centred, where your faith means nothing unless you can make an outward show of it, since that's just what the worldly culture is.

>Is there a deeper crying out for God hidden in their sad and self-deluded cries for attention?

Yes, you are right here - but the problem is that most of these people are spiritual cripples, and are not able to actually turn away from superficial LARPing, virtue signalling, and piety signalling yet. Their desire to believe the truth and to reject evil is there, but their desire to actually repent and become entirely different to the world is lacking, due to being raised a spiritual cripple in this day and age.

>Is it a countercultural trend, a reaction to the overall atheistic strain in modern culture?

Yes, that's also part of it - since people are seeing the end conclusions of atheism (that, if there is no God, anything at all is permitted and possible, with no limits at all - if there is no God, then transgenderism, prepubescent drag queens, forced v...nations, etc are all permitted), but LARPers aren't seeing their LARP for the crypto-atheism it is, yet. They're trying to use the truth as a bludgeon to force the world to conform to what they want - not to change themselves in conformity to the eternal Truth, Christ.

That's just a phase of growth that a lot of people have to go through. Most unfortunately get stuck there - but for many people it's just a phase they have to grow through.

>>19758012
>Seraphim Rose (who didn't have those aesthetics

Books discussing the path for the modern Orthodox man?

>I look back fondly on René Guénon as my first real instructor in Truth, and I only pray that you will take what is good from him and not let his limitations chain you. Even psychologically, “Eastern wisdom” is not for us who are flesh and blood of the West; Orthodox Christianity is clearly the tradition that was given us—and it can be clearly seen in the Western Europe of the first ten centuries, before the falling away of Rome from Orthodoxy. But it also happens that Orthodoxy is not merely a “tradition” like any other, a “handing down” of spiritual wisdom from the past; it is Gods Truth here and now—it gives us immediate contact with God such as no other tradition can do. There are many truths in the other traditions, both those handed down from a past when men were closer to God, and those discovered by gifted men in the reaches of the mind; but the full Truth is only in Christianity, God s revelation of Himself to mankind. I will take only one example: there are teachings on spiritual deception in other traditions, but none so thoroughly refined as those taught by the Orthodox Holy Fathers; and more importantly, these deceptions of the evil one and our fallen nature are so omnipresent and so thorough that no one could escape them unless the loving God revealed by Christianity were close at hand to deliver us from them. Similarly: Hindu tradition teaches many true things about the end of the Kali Yuga; but one who merely knows these truths in the mind will be helpless to resist the temptations of those times, and many who recognize the Antichrist (Chalmakubi) when he comes will nonetheless worship him—only the power of Christ given to the heart will have strength to resist him.

>It is my prayer for you that God will open your heart, and you yourself will do what you can do to meet Him. You will find there happiness you never dreamed possible before; your heart will join your head in recognizing the true God, and no real truth you have ever known will be lost. May God grant it!