One of [Eugen] Rosenstock-Huessy's contentions is that the next thousand years will be a time of "regrafting the dead branches of humanity back into the Tree of Life." ERH has proven to be remarkably insightful so far, and I hope his prophetic mantel continues to bear fruit. I take him to mean Europe, and even more radically, the Middle East.

In terms of Europe, can "the last man" really be "the last man"? Did not Christ die to redeem him as well? The "last man" is a prodigal son who is still in the pigpen, and to date has determined to remain there.

Half of Christ's program has thus far been completed. Nature is dead. The "last man" is the man who has thoroughly seen through nature, but has not yet gone on to be reconstituted by super nature. Islam is simply a violent attempt to return to blood and clan. It is thoroughly reactionary, and I think now spent. Whatever violent convulsions are still in it, it is incapable of creating any kind of future at all.

I struggle with all these issues partly because of where I live. My town is almost nothing but a populace of prodigals wallowing in the swill. I wake up every day trying to find some way to help some to find their way home.

Here is where I see it at this point. Jesus said that if anyone wanted to follow him, he must "hate his father and mother, and follow him." When St. Francis walked naked away from his father in the 13th century, it was still a revolutionary act. But no longer. By the late 20th century and early 21st century, everybody hates their father and mother. It is no longer revolutionary, or even interesting. Blood ties are no longer adequate to define us. The only real way forward is through working out the meaning of baptism. Since this isn't done, the alternatives are, a) reactionary and dead Islam, b) thoroughgoing neurosis - that is, being very unhappy at the fact that blood does not satisfy, and spending most of my life carping about parents, etc., to some psychotherapist trying to make it pan out, when it never can, or c) Buddhism or eastern mysticism which tells me that all the old natural bonds were illusory in the first place. The other older options of large public ideologies (like Marxism or fascism) appear to be dead or at least non-functional at the moment. Hence, our mythologies are pretty limited and uninteresting. We are mostly reduced to family myths. The older larger ones were more interesting (i.e. communism or nationalism, or some other -ism). Now it's only my father's or big brother's or mother's fault instead of the Jews or the capitalists. Pretty boring. But also, perhaps a victory for Christ. Christ appears to have reduced all the large myths to nothing. Now, the only really interesting direction to turn is to Him [to] spiritualize and supernaturalize the old bonds of nature. Nietzsche foresaw how boring it was all going to become. Jesus is really the only exciting thing left.