Patriarch Mindset by Michael Sebastian - Review

From a pagan POV

Book cover, the sculpture is King David by Nicolas Cordier, early 1600s. It is now in the Borghese Chapel of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.

My goal on this blog is to create yet another postmodern synthesis of paganism. To that aim, I’ve been reading pagan books to deepen my knowledge of the various tradition under that umbrella. I’m learning from the good things about them and from their mistakes. I’m going to publish on Amazon, hopefully this year. I’m nearly done with the reading parts, you can start checking out my reviews of some previous titles with this twitter thread.

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Various titles end up on my reading list and this time it was Patriarch Mindset by Michael Sebastian. Patriarch Mindset is a textbook for a young Christian man who wants to live a Christian life.

Now I am not in the target demographic, but was curious. It is definitely not as transformative as Bronze Age Mindset, which this book tries to emulate. (Notabene the patriarchs in question also lived during the Bronze Age). It is composed of two parts, the outline of the patriarchs, and a vision of a masculine Christian life. The latter is more of a collection of essays, each covering an aspect of life - physical fitness, dating, finances, etc.

I’ll talk about the good things about it, then criticisms. The latter are divided into disputable bad takes, factual errors, and lastly things that might make it great for Christians but really not-attractive for others.

The good

The overview of the lives of Patriarchs - Adam, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and David (technically a king) are the core and the best part of the book. The descriptions are engaging, in line with what I remember was the case in the Bible and with a commentary.

For a non-Christian reader it can be read as an exercise in erecting a lifestyle compatible with a set of ideas. I’d comment more on the good stuff, but we humans focus on that which doesn’t fit, so the volume discrepancy between + and - here I see as natural.

Bad takes

The first criticism is takes that are debatable, but I wouldn’t attach too much weight to them, as regarding the core ideas of the book.

There is a portrayal of Enlightenment as a homogenizing force and detaching humans from nation and religion. (page 42) Religion yes, nation no, nationalism is a child of Enlightenment. Capitalism is much more of a homogenizing force. Even the post-WW2 US was quite nationalistic until Vietnam and Watergate.

Page 90 features a critique of Stoicism - that it leads to a passionless life. That is correct. Yet that feels like an attack against the whole of Hellenic tradition. Stoicism is often seen as the poster child and steelman for it, so I partially understand this. The issue is that the book does not consider any alternative approach, for instance Epicurean one. Historically Stoicism was not the golden boy, there were many traditions and Stoicism was not the earliest arrival. It is kind of like seeing Logical Positivism as the epitome of Enlightenment, while they were only a niche school in it.

Page 92 has the story of Jews oppressed in Egypt. I’ll summarize the events: ‘they were invited by Joseph who was the Vizier in Ancient Egypt. After 400 years some new pharaoh was suspicious of them so enslaved them. They had to escape.’ That story is used as part of anti-immigration agenda, but without skill. The reader is supposed to learn a lesson that whenever 2 nations live in one land, there will be animosities, so they need to be assimilated. That is a lesson from 1 case, and the Jewish people take it as a point of pride their not-assimilating, so the case of them in Egypt doesn’t seem like an ordinary case one can extrapolate from.

There are bigger and less debatable errors here.

Factual Errors

I need to address some factual inaccuracies.

Author tells you (page 58) that God will probably bless you with material wealth. Now that is not a valid description of the product that is serving Yahweh. Book of Job is a tragic story of Job losing all he had - family, material wealth and health, and still keeping reverence to God, even when people told him it’s folly, saying he should curse instead. Rewarded by his persistence and faith, he regains health, gets new wealth and a new family. That of course fixes everything. He didn’t do anything wrong, it was just a test, bro.

Next (page 159 ) we have an unrealistic view of the ‘traditional society’, that :

you would stand as a descendant in a long line of your ancestors. You would be from a particular village and be part of a particular people. Similarly, your Christian faith would make you distinct from other religious groups. […] All of this would be undergirded with the belief that this order was willed by God.

I might have spoken on this before. That is more of an early modern description than medieval for instance. For peasants (90+% of the population) the reality was that ancestors are forgotten after 3-4 generations, you barely know people in the town (and are suspicious of it), you syncretize Christian faith with folk pagan practices. On the other hand, monks were bureaucrats with a universalist vocation, not loyal to their specific village of origin, but the monastery and Pope.

Interestingly enough, we have factual errors in fiction references.

Page 163 says about the Nine Pilgrims of Lord of the Rings:

the hobbits themselves are essentially just middle class types with no great heroes or leaders in their blood line.

That is clearly wrong, and a big disrespect to them having Elvish blood of the Took family and the Brandybucks, both famous Hobbit families.

Then (page 165) compares globalism and elitism in Harry Potter with isolated, non-mixing cultures of Elves and Dwarves in Tolkien’s Middle Earth - ignoring the obvious difference in technology, population size and travel times.

Finally page 174 says Matrix had aliens in them - while it was obviously robots.

I didn’t expect to be this nitpicking.

Finally, and it’s a big one, there is a profoundly non-Christian view of the future. Most Christians in the US expect the Second Coming of Christ during their lifetimes, and see the present as some hard tribulation.

You’d expect some theme of waiting until that would be present, and being ready, like Parable of Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). Nothing like that is present. No mention of Apocalypse, actually the future is quite rosy in the outline on page 246. The quote is from Deuteronomy 7, 22 NKJV:

And the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to [h]destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.

The Heart of Submission - Erroneous approaches

Finally what makes this lifestyle proposition not quite appealing to me as a pagan reader? The kind of man the reader is supposed to become is on the one hand portrayed as a Chad: wordly powerful, physically fit, engaged with local politics, respected by the community and blessed with faithful children. These are respectable features of any man no matter his religious beliefs and practices. But behind all these, there is an urging towards a completely alien mindset. Revisal of the deepest mental habits. It is scary to think someone would do this to themselves voluntarily. (That is why most converts are from a low point in life, such as addicts.)

the Patriarch is to seek after every spiritual blessing that is available. There is no question of being the sort of Christian who does the bare minimum. Dare to be a great saint (page 47)

a man who adopts the Patriarch mindset will cultivate a deep prayer (p 34)

This and on page 51 the author tells you that you are a center of anthropocentric cosmic drama. Then after describing a set of daily religious rituals (3 x prayer and before meals, and Bible reading + some contemplation), page 191 has this

This program is not intended to be just a checklist of things you must do. The whole purpose is to bind a real relationship with God that lasts through every waking comment of the day. For the Christian man, the existence of God cannot be theoretical. The presence of God must become a lived experience.

[…] priests of Opus Dei prelature provide excellent spiritual guidance

Now that isn’t talked about on the back cover, or in the introduction. It is a perfidy, a requirement smuggled in so that you can get the socially valued stuff.

Evangelize your friends and close associates. Practice the “apostolate of friendship”. [...] All Christians should act as leaven to gradually bring their community to Christ

Page 240, and requires no comment. 🚩🚩🚩

I do have some complaints about the public-facing activity set. Starting with the injunction to get married:

the institution of marriage involves more than a man and a woman. It must be supported by the entire society including a legal system that favours keeping marriages together.

This is found on page 181 and I agree. That is a case against marriage actually. I don’t think the author meant it like that, but the lack of social support demonstrates it is a relic, even if you think it’s a relic from the good times.

Then the duty is prescribed to take steps to protect your family and make it economically independent from the regime.

There is quite a lot of mention of politics, much of it taking the form of' ‘our elites are bad, they hoard money and make policies people don’t like’. It’s quite a derangement syndrome, that I’d summarize:

it’s not a real elite, real elite would agree with me!

The elites have money and moral visions and do not fear to impose them on the population. Yet the book does recommend certain political actions. Page 243 contains more precepts: you need to get involved with the local GOP, school board, or state legislature, or make a Christian COOP or community bank. And that just sounds tiresome and not fun. Where is social hanging out with frens? Where high-status leisure activities? That all sounds dry and not fun. It feels like the only grounds for satisfaction of a man following this would be the subjective feelings of improvement according to the ideal, maybe joys of family life - but that is not emphasized here.

Conclusion

I miss the Nietzschean vibe of ‘god who dances’ here.

Now this could be included here. Joyful Christianity is inspired by King David dancing in reverie. There could be a statement about how much more fulfilling it is to have children. Don Bosco is one of the figures more known for such an approach.

The book just assumes reputation, family life are good - more of a guide on how to achieve something than an argument for a Christian life. Now I believe the BAM book is more vocal about the argumentative aspect FOR a lifestyle as well as advice on HOW to get there. That textbook rather than persuasive character was not present to me when I was buying it. Maybe I wouldn’t buy it then.

This title joins Theology after Vedanta and You are Gods (my thread on this) as books that disappointed me as things from Christianity a pagan could extract some nuggets from. The chasm of difference is too deep.

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My plans for the nearest future is to finish the Anarchist LLMs series and the whole topic of TPOT as a pagan school of thought.

I’ll leave you with this fascinating video narrating Yahweh as a trickster-type deity.