Home Latest PostsThe Much Forward-Facing Vibe Shift – a ResponseJuly 27, 2022The Distributist is among my favourite content creators of the dissident right, bringing an earnest, mature perspective into a medium that always gravitates towards frivolity and shallowness. Still, despite his overwhelmingly positive influence in our communities, I cannot ignore the problems he fails to diagnose in modernity. The core of my critique will focus on his thoughts on what right-wing contemporary art could look like, specifically focusing on his latest Substack essay, ‘The (He)art Reset‘. It is common in our spheres to scoff at ‘cuckservatives’, a term which describes the Boomer generation of fusionist neocons who idolised the policies of Thatcher and Reagan and practically failed to conserve anything of substance. It is also common to scoff at conservatives of every stripe – not for failing to conserve, but for actually managing to conserve things that at their origin were subversive and revolutionary. Dave spares no adjectives when referring to these stuck-up types, who ‘have forgotten nothing and learned nothing from their past failures’, who ‘possess zero ability to appreciate non-representational beauty’. They also ‘bleat tired canards’ like the common sense remark that ‘modern art sucks’. He calls conservatives ‘weak’ and ‘unwilling to grapple with the harsh lessons of modernity’. His name calling culminates with the declaration that ‘conservatives in temperament will always be backwards’ and that our current age ‘means the death of the Western conservative project.’ After reading the article, one is starting to suspect that this is more than a criticism of neoconservatism; that it is in fact more like a Promethean futuristic reactionary dismissal of the past, in the vein of Nietzsche, BAP (whom Dave praises as having good intuitions about the future) or technocratic archaeofuturism. Prometheans Against Conservatives If you are not clear about what a ‘futuristic reactionary’ might look like, think about the French Nouvelle Droite. In a scientific paper titled ‘Responses to Modernity: the Political Thought of Five Right-Wing European Thinkers in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’, Matt Gibson, an academic from the University of Kent, claims that what is commonly understood as ‘right wing’, is in fact a conglomerate of 3 irreconcilable ideologies: Conservatism, Orthodoxy (or Traditionalism) and Prometheanism. Whenever you see twitter bodybuilding reactionaries mocking conservatives, you are witnessing Prometheans attacking Burkean Conservatives. Prometheanism is defined in the above paper as ‘a future-oriented orientation that values creation for its own sake, the as-yet-uncreated precisely because it has never yet existed, and denigrates the past precisely because it has already been’. Burkean conservatives, on the other hand, are defined as ‘a past-oriented orientation that values what is precisely because it is and has been’. Orthodoxy is defined as ‘the ability to connect subjects to a metaphysical realm so as to negate the perishability inherent in the sublunary human condition’, but we’ll discuss about it later. The core of Dave’s latest criticism against conservatives is an attack on this ‘past-oriented orientation’ lying at the core of their hierarchy of values. His entire critique is encapsulated in the following paragraph: ‘Most conservatives don’t even seem like people who properly understand the old world as it existed with all of its violence, complexity and weird non-representational art forms. I can’t help but feel sympathy, but conservatives in temperament will always be backwards.’ Conservatives are therefore accused of misplaced nostalgia (‘sentimentalism’) and the unjustified sacralisation of a past that was in fact violent and complex. In the following lines I will offer an answer to his criticism, hopefully showing why focusing on the past is vital to any artistic movement, especially on the right. Creating New Art Forms Some years ago, as an architecture student, I was asked to create designs of buildings that could fit in existing urban contexts. I am well aware of the thrill that comes with sitting in front of a blank canvas, with contemplating the birth of your finest creation to this date. The euphoria and daring attitude which makes so many young artists prone to revolutionary progressive ideas. At first I regarded my architectural designs in the way a modern sculptor or a car designer regards his artworks; as voluptuous, shiny volumes, almost like jewels on a pedestal. I turned them on all sides, looked at them from every direction. When I had to create 3d renders showing the buildings in their urban context, I hated any part of the existing that obstructed the view of my magnificent creation: parked cars, lamp posts, people passing by, even trees and hedges. I regarded my art as a pure Euclidean shape that should in no way be defiled by the existing filth. Needless to say, this autistic attitude is what makes contemporary architects detested by the people who are forced to witness and live with their designs. No one likes modern or postmodern architecture. Here there is no left-right divide; the soyboy, the wine aunt, the screeching red haired activist – they detest modern architecture. They are not vocal about it, but neither are they appreciators, enjoyers or fans. Looking at the Sydney Opera House won’t get them crying like in front of the Star Wars trailer. While still a student I eventually found a cure for this designer narcissism. Learning about heritage, architecture history, visiting cathedrals, historical towns and villages was like rehab for my design dopamine addiction. I learned about the importance of capturing ‘the spirit of the place’ or genius loci; of studying the slow development of a certain urban tissue, of understanding how Florence and Venice emerged looking like they do. The process is always organic and incremental; small selective filters that preserve a certain building height, a certain building type; making sure the church steeple is not obstructed, that certain iconic street views are maintained or even enhanced. There was a lot of trial and error, with many buildings failing to stand the test of time, or on the contrary – remaining in place with new layers of beautification added by each new generation. It eventually dawned on me that the work of art is the city itself; that my task as an architect is to engage with this spirit, become one with the land (a stroller or flaneur), understand its aims in a 2nd person approach, and then come up with an offering – my own new design – which modestly and reverently conforms, celebrates and (if possible) enriches the spirit of the place. I would not hesitate to call this attitude sacramental; it always involved the twin sacraments of contemplating the existing and creating something that conforms to it. If so many are unfamiliar with this attitude, it is because modernity shuns it in all its forms. Those living in modern environments like America or the former Soviet Union are having real trouble even conceptualising it in a world where ‘beauty’ is understood as ‘pleasure’ and equated with dopamine-inducing competitive games. Still, the diligent observer will be able to find relics of past beauty that, if paid attention to, can awaken in him the fascination for the actual. This can be easier done in natural environments. The sublime character of mountains, valleys, fields and forests is easily assimilated by almost everyone; and the secret ingredient behind natural beauty is the same incremental, organic transformation brought about by tectonic plates, volcanoes, rain, erosion. Once you start to notice this, it will be easier to apply it to man-made contexts and will start appreciating the contribution of the elements in ennobling historical buildings and showing their true age. No one likes building materials that refuse to age or do it badly (concrete, curtain walls, stained steel), yet we all love historical buildings of brick and limestone. Creating new designs in architecture or any other art field – from music to beaux arts – is not antithetical to honouring the past. In fact every artist knows that a detailed brief full of existing constraints in fact enhances one’s imagination and creativity rather than hindering it. Creating something completely new and in the middle of nowhere – say, a city like Brasilia or Milton Keynes – on the other hand turns out to lead to uninspiring or even catastrophic consequences. The following paragraph from T S Eliot shouldn’t surprise anyone who is serious in creating art in any form: ‘Our tendency is to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. If we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. Tradition cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature from Homer up to the present has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order’ (T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood). Nostalgia – Not a Dirty Word Every experience of beauty contains a layer of sadness. Have you noticed that? Just as you are standing on the mountain top, contemplating the sea of fog, you realise the transience of your sublime experience. That which you enjoyed is already in the past. Nostalgia and melancholic bliss, a sense of calmness and a sense of rest – these are all markers of beauty. When that which you behold GRIPS you and takes you out of your dopamine-filled appetitive pursuits, you are content to be in the moment, witnessing the smile of your new born child, the glimmer of sunset, the poems of Tom Bombadil for his beloved River-daughter. I will say it boldly – I’m fucking stuck in the past and will not apologise for it. Every single thing that is good, true and beautiful is part of a concrete, existing reality. Our ancestors are part of it and our artistic endeavour will inevitably be linked to a sense of sadness and gratitude. Thymos and Pistos are not corruptions of truth, like beep-boop Moldbug once claimed. When properly exerted, they form the higher gift of our nature. The Western Canon The Promethean attitude is, thus, the Luciferian lie at the foundation of any utopian, left wing or futuristic movement. No one should ‘value creation for its own sake, the as-yet-uncreated precisely because it has never yet existed’ and no one should ‘denigrate the past precisely because it has already been’. I know that lefties and normies detest history and see no value in conserving heritage. Christians or traditionalists, however, should grasp the value in what I am describing. Hell, even the democratic French Revolution sympathisers Chesterbelloc understood it. The greatest bulk of your Christian hope lies in the past, in the events of Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection. If you’re a pagan, you are constantly honouring your ancestors and making them proud. Orthodox-minded people should understand why remembering the past is important. The liturgical calendar with all its cyclical commemorations, the Rosary, the various prayers and chaplets – all these are cycles rooting one in a Past that matters. It matters to such a degree, that both present and future are meaningless without it. What about the Western Canon, then? The huge corpus of culture, high and low, forming what we are as European peoples? Some Orthodox people will argue that these are dead customs, dead forms which can be dispensed with if we make sure to preserve the kernel of truth, if we make sure to extract ideas that have ‘utility for the right-wing’ or the essentials of a simple life. To this I would point to the work of sir Roger Scruton. Orthodox-minded traditionalists have a sweet spot for Neoplatonism, for discarding the concrete and tangible, in favour of the pure essentials of ‘mere Christianity’. The Protestant Reformation attempted to strip religion of its embodied rituals, pilgrimages, icons and processions, and the results are abstractions devoid of any strength or creative ferment. The essence of Orthodoxy is undoubtedly true; we do need to ‘connect to a metaphysical realm so as to negate the perishability inherent in the sublunary human condition’. In order to do this, we need Scruton’s love of the actual; every form of spiritual ascension starts with a concrete ritual; every Eucharist starts with real bread and wine; every idea of a tree starts with noticing the real tree in front of you. And that tree is history. In his book, ‘Culture Counts’, Scruton argues The Western canon was shaped by finely tuned selective filters such as perceptual congruity, elevation and truthfulness, and is therefore a sacrament. The keys to the Kingdom of God are hidden in its songs, stories, towns and natural landscapes. It is literally an icon. Why are Conservatives failing, then? Being backwards is not the issue. Every successful cultural movement, every pinacle of civilisation was nostalgic and ‘backwards’ – Rome was being built while looking at the glory of Greece in the rear view mirror; Constantinople was being built while looking at the glory of Rome and Troy. Every solar king was busy achieving great deeds while larping as his archetypal predecessors – Achilles, Macedon, Caesar, Christ, Prester John, King Arthur. Scholars in the Middle Ages were memorising Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Boethius. The Renaissance wuz Greco-Roman n shiet. The British Colonial empire at its peak was itself an unending homage to the Christianised Roman Empire. What is the issue of cuckservatives, then? Going back to Dave’s quote, one can find the answer: “Most conservatives don’t even seem like people who properly understand the old world as it existed with all of its violence, complexity and weird non-representational art forms. I can’t help but feel sympathy, but conservatives in temperament will always be backwards”. Ignoring the East Coast knee-jerk condescension, most conservatives don’t know anything about the old world. The standard neocon outlets are so busy grifting and complaining about the poz, or exalting the revisionist libertarian view of history, that they are completely ignorant of the past. Those who decry abstract art have zero interest in classical painting. Those who decry mainstream pop culture have zero interest in any form of culture, other than podcasts, memes and messaging tools. If instead of generating ephemeral anti-woke content, one were to read something as commonplace as ‘The Lord of the Rings’ or the Grail Cycle, they would be nourished by history; they would enter in communion with the higher gifts given to us, and would find consolation for the state of contemporary affairs. What about the Future? Only the Strong Survive! One might finally argue that turning to the past is not enough to ensure a right-wing revival, of filling in the cultural vacuum left by the dying modern utopias. That in order to achieve prominence, the right must be Promethean for Machiavellian ends; that we absolutely MUST create some new Warhammer or Cyberpunk universe or some new musical genre, rather than returning to roots and encountering the classics. That might be the case; we might in fact be dinosaurs in a changing world of mass surveillance and AI. I still prefer to be backwards-facing and immerse myself in the classical canon (which requires a lot of effort to master, considering our educational systems fail to teach it) rather than coming up with experimental avant-garde internet content. Prometheanism always ends in leftism. If you read any Frankfurt school thinker, they were deeply interested in matters of cultural production, belonging, collective identity, nostalgia and the sense of loss caused by the Industrial Revolution. They tried to study these notions creatively and with an open mind; what they ended up doing was to subvert these notions, trying to invent new institutions to replace historical ones; a surrogate for ethnic group; a surrogate for religion; a surrogate for patriotism; a surrogate for family and kinship group. This is where the BAPs, Andrew Tates and Uber-chads are headed. In a couple of years their mockery of ‘backwards-facing cuckservatives’ will have shown their true colours, as enemies and denigrators of the past, ‘precisely because it has been’.... Dystopian Short StoryJune 20, 2022“Elon Musk’s son transitioned. The same Achilles’ heel that struck all the other “great man” types of the current age will strike him as well.” This is an unverified piece of news on Telegram. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or false; we all know Elon cannot pose any threat to the ascendant regime. If he cannot be forced to compromise, his offspring will do it for him. The spiteful menopausal spiders will use dissidents as heads on spikes that justify their narrative and will triumph in colonising the minds of their children. In less than two months, God willing, my first born daughter will see the light of day. I once had an idea for a dystopian short story. Some infamous podcast, hosted by a komissar of wellbeing and entertainer, features her talking to the camera about the net benefits of the latest bio-political facility her team has managed to implement. Through lobbying her team have convinced the American state to fund a huge concentration camp / sanatorium for deplorables; the show is broadcast from within the building; the commoners are being kept in seclusion in order to prevent viral infections as well as internet disinformation; they are monitored 24/7 by the lady’s analytics team, which constantly measure their pulse, diet and overall health. The podcast is a reality show in which the lady vents about the stubbornness of these secluded bigots, how they refuse to see the merit in this enormous health and safety program which pours millions of dollars into making sure they are ok; they don’t die from some viral infection or through political radicalisation. HOST: In this initiative I have been nothing but compassionate and loving. Years and years of pure dedication and genuine caring for these people. HOST: nothing but self-sacrifice and pure abnegation! . HOST: And what do I get in return? Ingratitude! They think I’m off to get them. They think WE, who try to save their sorry asses, are enemies trying to poison or punish them! . HOST: Look at them! Look at all the rage, the populist rhetoric. They act like animals, like savage, mindless brutes. I’m not saying they are THAT (remember I have compassion), but simply that they CHOOSE to act like that. And you do that long enough, you become what you imitate. Just saying. It doesn’t have to be this way, bigots! You can seek clinical help. We can help you! We can educate you! If only you disgusting brutes would shut up and LISTEN to us!’ The short story ends with the disappointed host leaving her office. She cannot even wait to get back into her Greenwich Village penthouse, she must write an acid twitter status while still in the taxi. The time for such stories is long gone. We have seen Black Mirror starting in this vein and turning into something more sinister and disgusting than its fictional dystopian worlds. Besides, the entire shtick of such dark stories is the use of hyperbole and metaphor to cast light on some current event that would threaten to dehumanise our society. In this case, there is nothing hyperbolic or sci fi about the plot. Such reality shows are happening right before our eyes, and we are on the receiving end. Any attempt at telling moralising parables will only be heard by other bigots locked behind the glass cubicles. The pandemic has obliterated the independent middle class. We have been utterly screwed, not only during the lockdown months, but also with the long lasting consequences only small businesses must face post economic shutdowns and periods of forced isolation. While we slowly witness our jobs spiralling into the gutter, we are also forced to witness these reality shows of successful, ethical businesses and state institutions attempting to prove how much they care about marginalised, unheard voices. With every new move from the nudge team, with every new vegan burger ad, with every new environmental measure or policy, with every fire safety, diversity and inclusion move, we are losing yet another big client and must plan ahead for 10% inflation rates and rising petrol fees. To say that Linkedin has been utterly pozzed is an understatement. There is no surprise that social media networks, through their very nature as virtual communication means, tend to favour the loosening of bonds, the ‘deterritorialisation and re-territorialisation of assets’, the abstract progressive moral concerns over the concrete conservative ones. We also knew that no company based in Silicon Valley would ever consciously oppose such slow forces. But what we have seen over the past 2 years exceeds all expectations; our feeds have been turned into endless Pride months with ostentatious globohomo art forced upon every post, with algorithms nudging content up or down, either pulling you out of anonymity, or burrying you under 20 layers of soil, locked in iron chains. Crises are excellent times of reinvention and initiative, self help gurus tell us. Now is the time to come up with some new business formula, to start a campaign. Do not attempt it on Linkedin, however, unless you have decided to stand on the shoulders of giant wankers. If you are a bigot, you deserve to die with the dinosaurs. If you have a business, you will either distort it to fit the matrix, or lose it for good. If you are a young man, don’t ever dream of finding a stable relationship with a healthy woman. If you managed to do that, don’t ever dream of having children. If you’ve had children, against all anti-natalist environmentalist propaganda and shite government policies, don’t ever dream of keeping them safe from the poz. They will hate you with passion, eat the bugs, block their hormones, mutilate their genitals, dance in front of their tik tok screens with 7 filters of chromatic aberration while shoving vibrators down their surrogate genitals, while you drink yourself to death preferring never having been born. This, my friends, is the predicament we are being faced with in the West. By all means, move your entire frens and families down here; feel the euphoria of cosmopolitan lifestyle; educate your offspring in the values of tolerance and inclusion and knock yourself out with distractions for the rest of your lives. We Have Been So Terribly Betrayed.... II. Tonight, Tonight – PolyphemusMay 31, 2022I found myself standing near a huge ash tree in the middle of a green meadow; about 50 yards away I noticed a large multitude running in a state of violence and horror. I then witnessed a series of large bangs that shook the earth like quakes. I realised the multitude of humans were being squeezed by a huge cyclops, a one-eyed giant like Polyphemus. When I finally got close to the scene, the giant had withdrawn to a safe distance where I could still see him. He was now playing a Greek lyre and singing the lyrics of that deranged singularity song: ‘‘That life can change / That you’re not stuck in vain / We’re not the same, we’re different / Tonight’. I looked around me in shock and disgust, as I could see the remains of those multitudes squeezed like bugs. Not all of them had died; some who had escaped were still visible in the distance, catching their breath and looking at the cyclops in anticipation of his moves. I also noticed a concert piano close to where I was standing. Out of nowhere the thought occurred to me that someone worthy was expected to play that piano in order to tame the giant. If he liked the music, he would accompany the pianist on his lyre and finally make peace with humans. That thought gave me enough confidence to approach the cyclops and watch his moves intently. As I drew closer, I noticed him having a great time playing the chords of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shivers’. I started clapping timidly to the rhythm of the song from a safe distance. He noticed and was thrilled. He immediately jumped to another one of those God-awful Ed Sheeran songs, ‘Bad Habits’. I know all this because my colleagues at the Pixel Factory used to listen to Capital every single day. I continued clapping and humming. Cyclops: you recognise this tune?! Me: of course I do, and you are playing a very good rendition of it, if you don’t mind me saying! Cyclops: it’s good, isn’t it?! Cheers, mate! I’m so glad you like it, you have no idea! Cyclops: I love that @EdSheeran Catering is testing @BeyondCuredMeat #vegan ham! I got to try some earlier this year. I hadn’t attended any of his live concerts in over a decade, but I did it for this. Fur fox sake, go vegan! This will save SO MANY piglets! Me: I didn’t realise you were invested in the vegan cause! Cyclops: Oh, I’m not invested as much as I am in-basted. I’m a weirddough! All I want is peace, love, understanding and a chocolate bar bigger than my head. Ways to my heart: 1. Buy me food 2. Make me food 3. Be food . When STRESSED and in DOUBT – CUPCAKE it out. And always remember – the secret ingredient is always cheese! Me: So you love having a good time with foodie puns, I take it? Cyclops: We all love our little food puns, yes, but at the end of the day we want to make sure we advocate for the causes that deeply and earnestly concern us. Me: and what would you say those causes were, aside from veganism? Cyclops: We are a global design studio leading the evolving world of experiential culture. Me: Okay… What is your end product? Cyclops: A virtual architecture that surprises and seduces. We bring together architecture, storytelling and emerging technologies to create award-winning work. We make animation and film, too, testing the limits of what is possible and what is real. Me: So your goal is to seduce the masses? Cyclops: Of course! I am a sybarite! A sybarite is a devotee of luxury, blending fashion and function, blurring the boundaries between the arts and design. A sybarite has an appreciation for the finer things in life and lifestyle – from the everyday to the exquisite. The strength of a sybarite lies in its studio culture – a diverse global melting pot of ever evolving talent and personalities operating all at once from all across the globe. Me: Right. But we were talking about the causes that concern you deeply and earnestly. Are there such causes beyond surprise, seduction and the finer things in life? Cyclops: There must be… Take balance, for instance. You surely agree we must all strive for balance in all aspects of our lives?! Me: Yes! I completely agree. I keep telling others about the importance of balance as a metaphysical universal. Cyclops: A balanced diet is having a cupcake in each hand! Does that sound good?! . Seriously, the timing of the jokes and their phrasing must be refined to perfection. I can tell when I’m getting close to that. Believe me, some days I think I am on the verge of a fantastic breakthrough, that I am becoming something more than humanity allows for. When I get that feeling, I am convinced I can achieve anything I set my mind to, instantaneously. Cyclops: Doughnut take us lightly! We wanna give this world something to taco ’bout! Can I get an ah-men?! Me: We certainly want that. But wouldn’t you want to give the world something a bit more stable and consistent? We have been jumping from one subject to another without any concern for consistency. Cyclops: Geez, mate! You totally sound like Theresa May! ‘Strong and stable. Brexit means Brexit.’ Well here is something @StrongAndStable: Joie de Vivre! #LifeLust! Have you met anyone with a lust for life comparable to mine? You’re so absinth-minded! I AM life lust itself. Look around you! You notice other people here? Me: Life lust, you say? Without any other goal or reason? Cyclops: I like to party, mate. A party without cake is just a meeting! . Me: Then it’s understandable why you wouldn’t be interested in anything stable and consistent. All you want is to put up a show and receive praises for your performance. You love transient and colourful moving pictures; technology that thrills and intrigues . Cyclops: We do not see our time as continuous with what has gone before. Instead, we believe we live after a violent break with history. I’ll tell you what I want. What I really, really want. I want the end of history. For the gamers out there : ‘Hrrmmmmm? Mmmmmm… Very well! You… join the Serpent King as family! Together… we will devour… the very gods!’ Me: So you must have a big problem with history, religions, inherited culture and customs? Cyclops: Superstitious centuries / Didn’t time go slow / Separating sanity / Watching children grow! A’right, children. Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground! (Oh my god, I nailed it; perfect timing and perfect phrasing. They love it!) Me: I see you know your classics. Cyclops: Nothing a quick little search cannot fix. Salami-get this straight: ‘Seek and yeee shall find’. No, but seriously! This is indeed the essence of religion! Holy Land Frankincense covering the smell of guilt. All in remembrance of the sacrifice of the galactic CEO’s son! . You know… when the rascal got in trouble with the rabble… . Except the aroma of my incense isn’t obsolete, humourless, anachronistic. My religion is literally down-to-Earth! It’s called life lust. You know what life lust is called down here on earth? PENIS MEETS VAGINA! Aside from that, my butter half… Eat well, travel often. I hope you find your inner peas. The Cyclops and the multitudes have become so infatuated with each other that nobody notices me moving away from the whirlpool of the spectacle. With each new pun, the cyclops looked at the crowd with such great enthusiasm and insistence, as if to say “Look, look! Don’t you get it? Isn’t this amazing!? No, seriously, look at this!!!” And yet again I found myself standing next to the giant ash tree I had noticed at the beginning. The distant chatter of the cyclops had turned back into the same loud bangs that shook the earth like quakes, while the multitudes – instead of laughing and applauding, were fleeing in terror as they were being squeezed like bugs.... The Deep State vs. The Deep Right (mirror)April 22, 2022The following article was published by Curtis Yarvin on the American Mind website on 10/24/2019. We are posting it here for those interested in uncle Yarv’s ideas. You can find his latest essays and poems on his substack, Gray Mirror. New artefacts overthrow old impostures Under any stable regime in any time or place, from 19th-century Petersburg to 21st-century D.C., it will be found that the general population has no effective procedure, legal or illegal, by which to either control or replace the central organs of the state. This is normal and not weird. Autocracy is a human universal. Apparent exceptions to universals suggest sensor malfunction. The 19th-century Russian intelligentsia could at least dream of hurling bombs at the Czar. The modern administrative state, no less autocratic, is quite czarless. It is an oligarchy, not a monarchy. It has no one who can be effectively bombed. Final decision-making authority must exist somewhere within its Borgesian labyrinth of process. But for all practical revolutionary purposes, the “deep state” is as decentralized as Bitcoin, and as invulnerable—to ballots and bullets alike. It does not always get its way immediately. Politics can still frustrate it. Violence can make it angry. No force that can objectively capture, damage, even sustainably resist it exists. Again: this is historically normal, not historically weird. In a healthy regime, military resistance is insane and political resistance is useless. And anyone who thinks early 21st-century Washington is an unstable or dying regime should pray on their knees to never experience such a thing for real. Yet there is a third dimension of revolution: art. Art is the domain of the deep right—or art–right. You may not have noticed this kraken. It has noticed you. Alas, populists have been here before us, and soiled the place. “Politics is downstream from culture.” If culture involves wooing the masses with ham-handed propaganda—the ’30s “proletarian novel” of the Daily Worker, repeated as farce—we must quietly excuse ourselves. Art, if it’s art at all, aims at supreme aesthetic excellence. It does not even deign to notice its audience. If the whole world is inferior to art, art doesn’t give a rat’s ass. Art is not competing with anything but itself, the past, and the future. If it is not sub specie aeternitatis, it is not art. Art as Weapon But how can art become a weapon? Oh, art is extremely dangerous. Anything dangerous is a weapon. Let’s look at how, in the last century, one aesthetic killed hundreds of millions of people. Czarist Russia, which the 19th-century intellectual world considered the epitome of cruel autocratic despotism, also produced some of that century’s best novels. Its writers, a few nuts like Dostoyevsky excepted, were not supporters of the Czar. Ideologically, they tended to be fashion victims of London—a pretty normal thing in that century. (Tolstoy is perhaps the great figure of this generation. Tolstoy himself, of course, would not hurt a fly.) This disaffected intelligentsia eventually became so culturally dominant that they managed to buffalo the Czar into helping the British and French start their great war to make the world safe for democracy. This had great results for everyone—including, of course, the Czar. At least it wasn’t boring. The ultimate cause of the entire Russian Revolution—February and October—was Tolstoyan anglophilia, an aesthetic impulse. The prophet of October was of course Marx—a born-again London gentleman, whose ideas are drivel and whose writing is divine. Bolshevism was an aesthetic experience. Nazism was also an aesthetic experience. And democracy remains one. To play in this league, to compete on this historical scale, requires aesthetic gestures of great power: strong gods. From a more mundane perspective, Pareto defined a revolution as a “circulation of elites.” A new elite, with new personnel, new doctrines and new institutions, displaces the old. Art is the language of the elite: the language of talent. Elites have been defining themselves with art for three hundred centuries. All revolutions begin as a fundamentally aesthetic break. The first step in a cultural revolution is the birth of a new artistic school. Behind this aesthetic must come an artistic movement, then artistic institutions. These institutions, if they prosper, become the cultural core of the new regime. Art is the spring, lever and hinge of any real change in our time. Artistic dominance is not a marketing metric. Power is not a function of book sales. Power is achieved when legacy elites fear the new revolutionary elites—are shamed and humbled by the sheer excellence of their work, and fear to even speak their names. Dominance always markets itself. The easiest path to aesthetic dominance is mere truth. Above all, one feature makes any story ugly: lies. Most regimes are destroyed by their own accumulated mendacity, which renders them ugly, and undermines the aesthetic foundations of their support. Once regimes begin to rely on force to reinforce their narrative, they are unlikely to ever be able to return to a freestanding story, which people just believe because it seems obviously true. In the short run, lies can work wonders. In the long run they tend to show. Lies are also very hard to get rid of, even when no longer useful. They are normally burned off en masse, by the next unconditional sovereign discontinuity (regime change). Every new regime sees its predecessor as profoundly mendacious. Few are wrong. As Carlyle said of the Revolutions of 1848: It is probably the hugest disclosure of falsity in human things that was ever at one time made. These reverend Dignitaries that sat amid their far-shining symbols and long-sounding long-admitted professions, were mere Impostors, then? Not a true thing they were doing, but a false thing. The story they told men was a cunningly-devised fable; the gospels they preached to them were not an account of man’s real position in this world, but an incoherent fabrication, of dead ghosts and unborn shadows, of traditions, cants, indolences, cowardices,—a falsity of falsities, which at last ceases to stick together. Wilfully and against their will, these high units of mankind were cheats, then; and the low millions who believed in them were dupes,—a kind of inverse cheats, too, or they would not have believed in them so long. A universal Bankruptcy of Imposture; that may be the brief definition of it. All institutions become infected with the same impostures. Thus all institutions become ugly. Where those institutions produce art, that art must contain and reinforce all these mendacities. The art itself becomes literally ugly—we have all seen it. We are trained to look past these ugly lies. They are blemishes, we think, on a better world. Art and art alone—not rational argument—can hold our hands as we step outside them. What is art? Are “memes”—all the rage with my fellow kids!—art? Certainly any age has its idols. Once enough clay feet are spotted among the idols, all the idols will fall into contempt; and all will be mocked, among my fellow kids, with no regard at all for truth or falsity. Clearly this is where we are now. The Washington Post just ran a great op-ed by a woman who caught her tween kid laughing at a Hitler meme. Hitler is looking behind him, bored, at some Party rally. A MAGA-hat bro leans forward in a quote bubble, and—tips him off about Normandy. Somehow this child convinced his mom that he’d misinterpreted the meme and laughed because it was actually making fun of Hitler. More diversity training was still indicated—and, we are told, effective. God bless the young. But as the Bible says: when I became a man, I put aside childish things. These memes, these little japes, toys for a tween to mock his middle-aged mom, are not the planes, tanks and battleships of the artistic struggle for the world. When the lion hunts his cubs must retreat. New Aesthetics, New World Here is needed not some ghost of the old century, but the absence of that century; not the absence of the old, but a vision of the new; not a new vision, but a new institution; not an institution, but a new academy; not an academy, but a new regime; not a regime, but a whole world renewed. Friends, I say to you: we are not even at the beginning of the beginning. Our first step, now and for quite some time, is one thing and one thing only: creating the finest possible art. The first step in getting to the 21st century is inventing it. The first step in inventing the 21st century is an aesthetic vision so strong, true and clear that it dominates and intimidates the stale old aesthetics of the 20th century. Man invented art for one reason: to mog. The only reliable way to change a regime is to impress it into surrendering of its own free will. Persuasion is beta; only the uncertain persuade. The strong perform. Art, in the broadest possible sense—some might say content—is the bloodless weapon that can replace the world. The world cannot be won by force. She must be seduced by greatness. And while the great will never lack followers, counting followers never brought greatness to anyone. Apart perhaps from Houellebecq, Bronze Age Pervert is the first major writer in our time to understand and inhabit this reality. Of course, that doesn’t mean we need his foam in our cappuccino. Indeed, when the future looks back, Bronze Age Mindset will be seen as an early, badly edited and produced, slightly embarrassing effort—notable for when, not what. Yet the Pervert himself may be best positioned to surpass his early work. (In fact such a book, a book of true power, should not be a crappy POD edition, available to any digital idiot, but a limited calfskin printing, sold by invitation only. Everything about both experience and object must be unique, amazing, and intimidating: a book, like its author, must thrive.) Yet the mission of the work is simple. Many misunderstand the message: they see BAP make a positive case for this thing, that thing, some crazy thing; Hollow Earth, Fomenko chronology, genetic inferiority of Udmurt and other Finnic peoples… wake up! BAP has no “message” in this stupid sense. Like his ancestor Nietzsche, BAP is not “for” this, that, the other thing. His book is not a lecture but a fire. It does not teach, it burns; it is not words, but an act. And it has no message. But it does have a theme. The theme of Bronze Age Mindset is the smallness of the modern world—in mind, in space, in time. To others, righteous among the normies, it is given to push back on the shrinking walls of the Overton bubble. Nothing wrong with that; but the real mission is to escape the bubble. The ocean is much larger than its surface. Most of it is an empty desert. As a mass of meat, a mere human army, the deep right is tiny. Yet as a space—artistic, philosophical, literary, historical, even sometimes scientific—all fields that are ultimately arts—the deep right is much larger than the mainstream. If we compare just the books published in 1919, to those published in 2019, we see a far wider range of perspectives. Almost all present ideas are also found in the past; but almost all ideas found in the past have vanished. Like languages, human traditions are disappearing—and a tradition is much easier to extinguish than a language. The mainstream mind looks at its own bubble through a fisheye lens. The bubble is almost everything. All of outer space, all of history, is a tiny black fringe around it. This fringe is, of course, completely uninhabitable. Yet in an even lens, the past is much bigger than the present. The deep right operates in deep history; it accepts no temporal or geographic boundaries. It thinks, with Ranke: all eras stand equal before God. And if all eras are equal, so then are their ideas. Until we accept the prerevolutionary world, the old regime before this old regime, as valid and legitimate, we are not yet in contact with the true vastness of free intellectual space. The theme of Bronze Age Mindset is that if you think your mind is broad and open, you are wrong. It is a tiny, hard lump, like a baby oyster—closed hard as cement by nothing but fear. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” This message cannot be said. It must be shown—performed. And the only way to show it is for one author, a character yet more than a character, to display mastery of that space—the whole immense space of mind and time and space outside our increasingly absurd little “mainstream” bubble. In time this will no longer be enough. In time, every no will have been said. A yes will be required. To escape is not just to escape, but, in the end, to build. But every beginning belongs to itself. Now anyone can look out, outside the bubble, to see a fire burning in deep space, where nothing can live and no fire should be. And that, for today, is more than enough.... Tonight, TonightFebruary 7, 20221. Prologue – The Chymist The hooded stranger handed me an energy drink, as he was gazing absently at the animated lights of the Mile End boulevard. Hooded stranger: From this lofty keep I could nightly look out upon the city and its constant mutations. A different city every night. Yes, the city is indeed also a vessel. And it’s one that obediently takes the shape of very strange contents. The Great Chemists are working out unfathomable formulae down there. Look at those lights outlining the different venues and avenues below. Look at their lines and interconnections. They’re like a skeleton of something… the skeleton of a dream, the hidden framework ready at any moment to shift its structure to support a new shape. The Great Chemists are always dreaming new things and risking that they may wake up while doing so. Should that ever happen you can be assured there will be hell to pay. The stranger continued his condescending monologue while my body grew increasingly stiff. He claimed he himself was employed by the Great Chemists and the drink I had just finished was supposed to slowly turn me into a figment of his imagination, infinitely malleable, shifting shape according to his fantasies, while at the same time remaining passively aware of my helplessness. I was completely immobilised and I could hear my own heart racing as never before; yet at some point I eventually remembered! This wasn’t at all real! I had read it the other day in a book of short stories by Thomas Ligotti. As soon as the realisation occurred to me, I was able to move freely; my body lifted from the dreary loft and I was soon able to see the entire district of Whitechapel from a comfortable height. Still, the words of the hooded stranger lingered in my thoughts. The lights of these interconnected venues formed the skeleton of a gigantic being, whose pulsating heartbeat was beginning to feel like minor earthquakes. A deafening yawning sound ensued as I finally awoke from the night terror in cold sweats and a racing pulse. 2. The Luddite I was late for work, so after a 5 minute shower, I quickly dressed up, left the house and started sprinting to the train station. Few things can be more unpleasant than a 30-minute walk uphill on a frigid morning of February. With a sigh of relief I boarded the last train that would arrive in London just in time, as the warmth of the interior and the comforting fragrance of my flat white allowed me to sink into the chair and catch my breath. I put on my headphones and gazed through the windows absently, as the familiar voice of Melkor’s podcast was breaking the silence: Melkor: What’s happening, lads? As you all know, I’ve been having some rather dark thoughts lately, about the predicament we have been forced to live through for the entirety of our lives. These cohorts of experts, technocrats and talking heads who think they are in charge of our fates have proven to be incapable of predicting, let alone controlling anything. They promised us ‘the singularity’ would come by the year 2045, and here we are, 6 years later; their so called ‘digital ascension’ has not happened either. We have been living in these fockin’ metaverses our entire lives; this gamified petty existence, where they control the amount of movement your body is allowed to exert; the amount of oxygen you are allowed to breathe; this hellish, nightmarish state of mass surveillance has no ending in sight. And who in their right minds can look forward to this perverse notion of ‘ascension’ anyway!? Of denying the body in favour of some computer simulation?! Who in their fockin’ right minds can look forward to these spineless cowards lording it over our digital copies even after we have died?! These uptight disgusting fockers who failed to get laid in college channelled all their energies into this quest for digital immortality. Because they fear reality, they attempt to predict and simulate it. Because they want to prevent their own hurting from repeating, they want to forbid humanity from experiencing anything authentic. This has to fockin’ stop! We have reached the point where we have nothing left to lose! Tonight, me and a good friend will be showing up in Shoreditch, where we will be having an interesting chinwag. Join us for a pint, lads, and we’ll discuss the details. 3. Chemical transformations As I entered the lobby of our little office in Shoreditch, I was greeted by Rodolfo, the office manager, who told me I should head to the boardroom right away, as the meeting of the creative directors had started without me. I quickly finished my coffee, took one last bite of the delicious bacon and scrambled eggs muffin and headed to the small room at the back. The three other creatives along with an unknown guest welcomed me and brought me up to speed with the topic of today’s meeting: Kiran: Hi Gio; as you know, this week we commence work on ‘The Chemist’, a short film commissioned by our good friends at ‘The Imaginarium’. Archie here was getting ready to brief us on the film’s subject. There’s a lot to unpack here, so get ready! Archie: As I was saying, the film starts with this hall full of alumni; Auron Lanier, the dean of Goldsmiths (we’ll call him by his real name and cast an actor that can do a really good impersonation) says the following line: ‘Greetings, parents, and congratulations to Goldsmiths’ graduating class of 2045. Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply lazy, hostile to technological inovation and to see and interpret everything through the lens of the past. People who can transcend this natural default setting are often described as being ‘well-adjusted’, which I suggest to you is not an accidental term. : That is real freedom. That is what being technologically literate truly means, and understanding how to conceive of digital ascension; of being willing to die in the flesh and become uploaded into our collective afterlife. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the irrational fear of the future, the constant clinging onto the life inside this useless perishable body!’ Archie: Y’all know Auron’s infamous speech. What we want is to portray it as reactionary and dangerous. As y’all know, the cult of digital ascension is part of the problem we are facing as a society! These fetishisers of the virtual afterlife have placed all their hopes of immortality at the feet of ‘the singularity’, which was supposed to happen in the year of the dean’s graduation speech. Although the event failed to materialise, our technocratic elites have been working tirelessly for the advancement of machine learning and automation, hoping to trigger the long awaited exponential loop that would finally allow for complete technological oneness, followed by the possibility of eternal life. A kabal of fragile manchildren wanting to freeze time to a stop! Kiran: and we are well aware of the devastating inequality this reign of the nerd has brought into the world! Archie: right! ‘nerd’ is a key word for our film. By doing so, they become enemies of the future; a dangerous force of reaction and the irrational past. Archie: The message of the film must be crystal clear: civil disobedience, industrial action, mass uprising. And what better way to present this than through the figure of the Revolutionary? The dean of Goldsmiths leaves the classroom and later goes to an expensive cocktail bar where he reads scientific papers and drinks alone. There he meets this elusive stranger who questions and dismantles his deeply held beliefs. The back and forth must be dramatic; the dean throws his best at the stranger, but his discourse is refuted time and time again. It all culminates in an epic monologue by the elusive stranger. Here I want you to quote verbatim from this short story by Thomas Ligotti: “I tell you, no one worships this city as I do. Especially its witticisms of proximity, one strange thing next to another, which together add up to a greater strangeness. Just look around at these caved-in houses, these seedy stores, each one of them a sacred site of the city, a shrine, if you will. You won’t? You’ve seen it all a million times? A slum is a slum is a slum, eh? Always the same. Always? Never.What about when it’s raining and the brown bricks of these old places start to drip and darken? And the smoke-gray sky is the smoky mirror of your soul. You give a lightning blink at a row of condemned buildings, starkly outlining them. And do they blink back at you? No two times are the same. No two lives are alike. We’re like aliens to one another. Are these the same gutted houses you saw list night, or even a second ago? Or are they like the fluxing clouds that swirl above the chimneys and trees, and then pass on? The alchemical transmutations are infinite and continuous, working all the time like slaves in the Great Laboratory. Tell me you can’t perceive their work, especially in this part of the city. As I was saying, everything is just variation without a theme. Oh, perhaps there is some unchanging ideal, some sturdy absolute. But to reach that ideal would mean a hopeless stroll along the path to hypothetically higher worlds. And on the way our ideas become feverish and confused. Perhaps, then, we should be grateful to the whims of chemistry, the caprices of circumstance, and the enigmas of personal taste for giving us such an array of strictly local realities and desires. From this lofty keep I could nightly look out upon the city and its constant mutations. A different city every night. Yes, the city is indeed also a vessel. And it’s one that obediently takes the shape of very strange contents. The Great Chemists are working out unfathomable formulae down there. Look at those lights outlining the different venues and avenues below. Look at their lines and interconnections. They’re like a skeleton of something… the skeleton of a dream, the hidden framework ready at any moment to shift its structure to support a new shape. The Great Chemists are always dreaming new things.” – ‘The Nyctalops Trilogy, The Chymist’, Thomas Ligotti Archie: the dean cannot bear the monologue, he tells the stranger he has gone out of his mind; a knife fight ensues and the stranger deals him a mortal blow, then disappears into the night. Then we switch to scenes of crowds rioting, burning cars; think of the ending scenes in ‘The Joker’, we are going for the exact vibe. Kiran: Sounds pretty straightforward, what do you say, Gio? can we have a WIP storyboard from you by the end of the week? Me: Sure, I’ll brief the team and we will all get to work. As I went back to my desk, I felt shivers down my spine. The previous night terror, Melkor’s monologue and Archie’s briefing were all part of the same story. What the hell’s been going on? As I turned on the news, my face turned pale; the talking head was reporting on riots about to take place in Shoreditch; the infamous luddite group, ‘Melkor’s lads’ were expected to show up later on that day; people were strongly advised to remain indoors, while businesses were urged to finish work early. 4 hours later we were taking our lunch break at the Italian market. The nerds in our team were enthusiastically discussing some weekly raiding event inside their favourite game, ‘Horizon Siberian Winter’; as usually I felt bored to death, so I had nothing better to do than listen to the directors’ takes on culture and politics. This time Archie had stayed with us and my colleagues were eager to pick his brain and cherish his every word. They all seemed worried about the riots; Melkor’s lads were seen as the lowest imaginable scum and a civilisational threat. While all my colleagues shared this terrible concern, Archie seemed aloof and untroubled. ‘These pissant rubes will never be able to pose a serious threat to anyone. Without in-depth knowledge of cog-psych, machine learning and complex adaptive systems, the entire infrastructure we all cherish and enjoy is a complete black box to them. Imagine a pack of chimpanzees attempting to destroy a fleet of drones. Completely laughable. And you will all get my full meaning soon enough.’ Suddenly my phone started ringing; I looked at the screen – it was a call from a rival film-making studio, where I had applied for an interview. It all came back to me! The interview was supposed to take place today around 13:00, and I had completely forgotten about it. I put them on hold as I went outside the market, looking for a private spot where the traffic was not too loud. As soon as I found it I apologised profusely and asked for a rescheduling. Mordechai: Don’t worry, Gio. I understand you have important tasks to perform at your current company. We can wait a while longer. . Mordechai: how long does it take to walk to our office? Me: I haven’t taken the day off, I’m afraid; my directors will be expecting me to return to the office shortly. Mordechai: Look around you. What’s going on over there in Shoreditch? As soon as I looked up from the screen, I witnessed a great commotion; people with face masks, all in their early 20s, wearing ‘Melkor’s Lads’ t-shirts, were evacuating shops and building barricades. My mind was going through a carousel of states, as the fight-or-flight instinct was beginning to kick in. Mordechai: don’t hang up. Keep walking down the boulevard calmly. I know you’ve been listening to Melkor, but please refrain from showing any signs of sympathy. If you keep calm, you will be left alone. To my horror I noticed a rival group approaching the barricades; all dressed in black and wearing shiny urbex gears. With amazing coordination they started tearing down the barricades and kicking the shite out of their rivals; as I was trying to appear passive and untouched, they were using trained dogs to drag every Melkor lad out of his hiding place, either punching them unconscious or taking them into their vans. Half an hour later I was at the reception, preparing for my late interview with Mordechai. 4. Crusader Uber-Geeks Mordechai: beer or energy drink? Me: water, thank you. Me: you know a few things about my private interests. I’m not sure this is a good start for our potential collaboration. No employee likes to be spied on by his directors. Mordechai: everything we have gathered about your interests was readily available on public platforms. ‘The Chemists’ of the metaverses can gather that info at any time; if we wanted to harm you, do you think we would have shared anything with you? Me: so your goal in film-making is political as well? Why can’t everyone leave these things aside and enjoy their lives for a change? Mordechai remained silent as he started searching intently through his drawer. He pulled out a remote control and turned on the conference screen. The news were showing live footage without commentary; to my absolute horror I saw an array of masked men in black smashing the windows of the building next to my office. Machine gunshots were heard from all directions; the camera then turned to the lobby of the Pixel Factory, where I could clearly see people lying unconscious on the floor. Mordechai: understand why I was a bit insistent earlier on the phone? You are completely safe here, but should maybe consider leaving London in the near future. Our main office is at an undisclosed location in an even safer spot. Me: what the hell is going on??? Who are these people, and why on earth would they attack my co-workers?! : Mordechai: the singularity is coming. It has been delayed, it’s true; but all AI models predict it in unanimity. What few people realise is that ‘the technocrats’ are not a single unified group. They are in fact two warring factions – the ‘digital ascension’ nerds and the hippie artists. Everyone identifies the nerds and hates them with passion. Their only goal is to reach immortality through upload. This burning desire has pushed them to the limits of their mental capacity; for decades they have been the driving research force behind machine learning, complex adaptive systems and cog-psych; leading the development of bio-tech and artificial intelligence. However, having a specific goal is also their fatal flaw. As technology has taken a life of its own and has been slowly emancipating from human control, they have continued to attempt to guide it in their desired direction, and they are starting to look like a midget bossing around a giant cyclops. Me: forgive me for speaking plainly, but do you really believe in that crap about AI becoming sentient and turning on humanity? Mordechai: you don’t have to take it too literally. Nobody claims that this giant processing conglomerate is governed by a will of its own, comparable to the will of human individuals. The entire process is emergent. The world is now a single connected system with the rate of connectivity accelerating exponentially. The global political, economic and social system that transcends the nation states are a set of interacting complex adaptive systems (CAS) built over a shared technological substrate of connected content, communication and communities. Political models of the future must model the global CAS as the interactions of the 3 vertical CAS layers over a monotonic layer driven by the 4th industrial revolution. Any and all models that do not reflect this will be incomplete, inconsistent, incoherent and incapable of modelling the problem or the solution domains for politics, economics and society. Me: so is this interconnected web a sentient being, or is it not? Mordechai: it is a different type of sentience, less centralised and more self-adaptive. There is no simpler way to put it. Me: what are its aims? and why are the ‘digital ascension’ nerds not fit to control it any longer? Mordechai: nobody can know or predict its aims; and even if gained the ability to speak and told us in plain language what it wanted to do, we would not understand it, as its level of complexity far outreaches any human ability to make sense of it. The ‘digital ascension’ nerds are unfit to administer it because they want something in return. When the singularity is unleashed upon the earth, the only humans that will be ‘well adjusted’ to administer – or rather serve it – will be those who have no other purpose in life than to witness its magic. These are the hippie artists. You are familiar with the people at ‘The Imaginarium’, I believe? Me: Yes, I met one this very morning. One of the smuggest characters I have seen in a long time. But I bet that conversation is also public knowledge!? Mordechai: It is indeed. The hippie artists do not shy away from stating their explicit goals. As you may recall from Ligotti’s story that troubled you so much, they worship ‘the whims of chemistry’, ‘the caprices of circumstance’ and the ‘enigmas of personal taste’. The random mutations of the Neo-Darwinian models appear to them as the highest sacrament they can partake in. Since there are no such things as ‘unchanging ideals’, ‘sturdy absolutes’ or ‘a path to hypothetical higher worlds’, every technological change is regarded as variation without a theme; a river in which you never step twice, and which also demands your absolute worship and devotion. By showing their willingness to serve, they hope the skeleton of this giant being will eventually reward their faithfulness and bring about some yet-unimagined state of bliss in which only they will be allowed to participate. Me: and where do you fit into this picture? Mordechai: We are ardent believers of the one true God; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We are crusading uber-geeks and have devoted our lives to bringing about the blessed historical synthesis. We believe our nations are under threat of replacement and unjust exploitation. We wish to bring this abomination under the rule of the righteous God, before it is too late. And we have a very small window of opportunity before the singularity is fully consolidated. Me: And you are hoping to use your knowledge of complex adaptive systems, emergence, AI and cog psych in the service of this higher goal, right? Mordechai: I could not have said it better! Me: and what about the luddite faction? what do you think it’s going to happen to them? Mordechai: they already lost the fight. I don’t ‘think’ this is the case; our models show it with every simulation. All factions hate Melkor’s lads and would set aside any infighting to see them crushed like bugs. Me: But the luddites are the good guys! They’re the only group who can keep its eyes on the correct Telos; cultivate physical abilities, moral virtues, earn wisdom, know God. In other words they are the only ones able to move on ‘the vertical axis’, so to speak, while everyone else seems to be concerned with the flat horizontal reality. The luddites are able to gain the Birdseye view without which no one could know what technological developments will do to our common good. The skeleton of this giant being must be dismantled; severe breaks must be put on technology, until humanity manages to figure out the answer to these deep questions! Mordechai: this is the worst idea I have heard in a long time. Do you realise the implications of ‘dismantling the skeleton’ of this giant being? It’s the end of life on earth as we know it! Me: but isn’t this supposed to be the inevitable by-product of the singularity anyway? Mordechai: it doesn’t matter; the singularity is INEVITABLE! only fools attempt to oppose the inevitability of the future! And once again – do you realise what such an endeavour would even look like? Nothing short of universal carnage and anarchy! Melkor’s lads are genocidal maniacs who have been slowly radicalised into adopting failed strategies that – even if miraculously implemented – would lead to such revulsion from the masses, that these pissant rubes would be defeated anyway. Me: But you realise Melkor never advocated for violence or protest. He fully realises the futility of such endeavours. All he is calling for is the inaction imperative; tactical detachment from politics in the hope of maintaining some semblance of normal decent living. And you have not answered his main points; do you think it’s wrong to take a break from the constant monitoring of machines? Is it wrong to pray or meditate? Is it wrong to focus on the health of your body, cultivate virtues and wisdom? Mordechai: Fuck this reactionary talk of virtue! Fuck his ideas of bodily health and fuck his ideas of wisdom!! All these things are passé!!! They have all been superseded by the new understanding brought about by complexity sciences. Our complex models shed light on the nature of reality; not his outdated books of wisdom and theory. By using emergence and complex adaptive systems we now have, for the first time in the history of our species, been able to gain access to full epistemic certainty. You cannot have virtue if you don’t see the complex landscape around you; let alone wisdom! And what use is a healthy body when we now have access to tools of genetic augmentation unthinkable in past eras? It all boils down to the question: do you have access to data or do you not? If you don’t and you obstinately cling on to past Newtonian models and superstitions, you are a false prophet. Me: That may well be the case, but I was under the impression that Complex Adaptive Systems are only helpful in establishing tactical objectives, like fighting an information war or mapping the territory more accurately. But all these realities still pertain to what I earlier called ‘the horizontal axis’; the domain of utility, strategy, fruitive action; when we talk about virtue, wisdom and the Sacred, we are moving on the vertical axis, participating in Theosis or however you want to call it. But if you reject every form of wisdom that preceded these complexity sciences, what makes you think you are a believer in the one true God? Were the authors of the ancient holy books and all the metaphysical treaties aware of complexity science? Of course they weren’t! Yet you don’t reject religious belief, do you? Mordechai: religious belief is a personal matter. I KNOW what is true in my own heart; I KNOW which God I serve. I am a Christian absolutist. I fight for my people; my nation is in danger and in order to help it I am willing to become ego-less, completely dedicated to the cause. You must become so too if you want to join us. And considering your previous employer is probably dead or in ICU, you haven’t got too many options to choose from. Me: okay, so what is your strategy in winning this war? Mordechai: We must study the emerging multiplicity and map it accurately. As soon as we anticipate the next moves of this giant emerging skeleton, we can come up with strategies of propaganda, leaks, targeted marketing, allowing it to slowly slide towards our desired goals. If we are always one step ahead of the crowd, we can trick this cyclops into following our own incentives. Once the thesis and the antithesis are in place, we can bend this giant being towards our own will, which – as I said previously, of course – is completely ego-less and subjected to the will of the One True God. Me: Can you give me a specific example of how this can happen? Mordechai: Sure. We know that the ‘digital ascension’ nerds have models as good as ours, but are too rigid in their expectations. They are indispensable to the well-functioning of the cyclops, but they sometimes get in its way. When that happens, the cyclops favours the hippie artists who want nothing but submit to its demands. The hippies are great devotees and enforcers of consensus, but they have two core weaknesses – they are not as technologically savvy, and they tend to want to butcher everyone else – ‘digital ascension’ nerds, luddites and ourselves. But without the tech monitoring of the digital ascensionists and ourselves, the cyclops can fall into disrepair, so it has to limit the influence of the hippies in order to prolong the singularity. Me: and what is your role in this balance of powers? Mordechai: we are the carrion-eaters of the ecosystem. Whenever the other factions become too one-sided, we purify the cyclop’s skeleton of anything too excessive. When digital ascensionists become too autistic in their desire for automation, we encourage the cyclops to favour the hippies; whenever the hippies become too degenerate in their revenge fantasies or their concupiscence, we purify the infrastructure of the deleterious mutations. Or whenever we must wage war on a foreign power, the cyclops always needs our help in convincing the masses that foreign intervention is the best course of action. So while we know for certain that everyone wants to murder the luddites, nobody will be able to lay a finger on ourselves; the uber-geeks are here to stay and eventually we will force this beast to bend its knee to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Me: so you’re blood hawks; you’re fucking neocons! Why didn’t you say so?! Could have saved your breath all this time. You have subverted every reactionary cause and turned it into a mockery of its initial stance; you never conserved anything, and in your delusions of grandeur you conceded every victory to your opponents, while still maintaining the insane belief that you will somehow power through this mess and emerge emperors on the other side. Mordechai: I tried to warn you, but to no avail. ‘Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’ Yet you will not abandon your luddite folly and your obstinate adhesion to anachronistic notions of the dark past. Me: You claim to be reactionary, yet you speak about ‘anachronistic notions’ and ‘the dark past’? Are you fucking kidding me, or do you take me to be mentally impaired? Mordechai: It is our sacred duty to incapacitate radicals like you. The data models show with complete certainty that you were going to be jailed and convicted for holding luddite beliefs; it was just a matter of time until it happened. Yet if you keep polluting the creative ecosystem with your backwards views, all you will do is draw attention away from a real solution to the singularity; and we don’t want to distract seeking souls from the righteous path. Me: the righteous path of holy emergence, is it? the sacred matter that is bound to ‘secrete’ divine intellect through bottom up random processes? Can you not see you are just like those you claim to oppose? Mordechai: you are now officially under arrest. My secretary will show you to your room where you will be provided with fine food and drink. I am leaving the city for a brief period. I will even let you in on a little secret: our models predict that the Singularity will occur at any point between next week and the week after. We are actually doing you a favour by locking you away from all the rioting in the city. Do you now understand why every intelligence agency is losing its shit? Melkor’s lads were not even there for protests; they were provoked and baited. They just wanted to plan some lame’o Amish commune in the countryside, some place up Norf where they were hoping to be left alone. Well, look at how well that worked out for them. Drone.set target – ‘uncle-ted’s cabin coordinates’. SetStrike. Boom! But you’re a rogue hippie, you know nothing about coding anyway. ‘Arrivederci’, ‘Shalom’ and ‘ma’asalama’, my dear Italian agent. 5. Singularity ensues I had been waiting for a few hours in my basement cell. Mordechai had been kind enough to leave me with my phone, so I was frantically watching news and podcasts. The world was indeed going through the pains of childbirth; Melkor had been completely silent since his last podcast; the news aggregators were spamming articles about the dangerous radicalisation of Luddism and how these disaffected piss poor lads were in fact part of an orchestrated move to hijack the national infrastructure. The creative hippies of ‘The Imaginarium Inc’ were broadcasted widely as they were giving their concerned takes on the combined reactionary danger of digital ascensionists and luddites; or how we have a civic duty to rethink the metaverses in more humane and eco-friendly ways. There was complete silence about the sacking and burning of the Pixel Factory. It was the middle of the night and after much absent disgust and apathy, I was finally dozing off, when all of a sudden a powerful sound seemed to reverberate from all directions. I looked at the screen of my phone and saw it playing a music video. Still, the sound was not just coming from the phone; it was as if all speakers in the city had been tuned in to the same music video – ‘Tonight, Tonight’ by The Smashing Pumpkins. The video started with the dramatic orchestral intro, followed by the soloist’s Donald Duck voice: ‘Time is never time at allYou can never ever leaveWithout leaving a piece of youth’ ‘And our lives are forever changedWe will never be the sameThe more you change, the less you feel’ ‘BelieveBelieve in meBelieve, believe‘That life can changeThat you’re not stuck in vainWe’re not the same, we’re differentTonightTonight’ The video then switched to an aerial footage showing a London cab speeding through a forested area; it then instantly zoomed inside the cab, showing none other than my interviewer Mordechai, looking worried around him. The video speeded ahead by a few miles, showing police crews blocking the roads. ‘We’ll crucify the insincere tonight(Tonight)We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight(Tonight)’‘We’ll find a way to offer up the night(Tonight)The indescribable moments of your life(Tonight)The impossible is possible tonight(Tonight)Believe in me as I believe in youTonight’ All of a sudden, the electricity went out and I was in complete darkness. Without the smart systems, the door to my cell unlocked by itself. I exited the building and was shocked to see the streets were as dark and deserted as the office headquarters where I had been taken captive. I threw away my phone and started running frantically. In less than two hours I was back at my place. The events of the day had been so tumultuous, I immediately fell into a deep slumber with dreams weirder and more frightening than even the night before.... Our Lady of the WebJuly 10, 2021Our lady of the desiccants, of dryness, tidiness, warmth and safeness,Our lady of teetotallers, hypochondriacs, disabled and dissenters.Our lady of planning and sterility, of choice and infertilityWho calculates all things, who disinfects all thingsWho decontaminates and deconstructs all thingsWho scoffs at all things.Our lady of the Menopause. Our lady of relationships – radical, personal, equitableUndiluted, unmediated, concrete, complete and definite.Of dating without courting, Of courting without binding. Our lady of praise.Of praising without singing, Of singing without dancing,Of dancing without partaking. Our lady of the naming and categorising, of mapping and systematising,Of doubting, of negating, collecting and dissolving.Our lady of shrinking, of fearing and recoiling,Of distrusting and demystifying, exposing and ironising. Our lady of augmenting and manipulating,Of radically improooving and already developing.Our lady of comfort, of prediction, of certainty and inhibitionOpening the heavenly gates, nobody waits, nobody contemplates,Colliding all minds, confiding her plans, locking all tenants inside.Our ethereal lady of transcending boundaries, Harvesting heads, discarding bodies.Of churning and churning and never returning.Our lady of turning in the widening gyreAnd surely of the Second Coming. Our lady of beyond despairAll my hate for you burns strongYou shall not desert me.... The sense of betrayal – why dissidents must stop being ‘anti-Establishment’July 6, 2021No faith will give you pleasure, that takes away the painBut hate will give you meaning, and make you feel again You may have heard the late sir Roger Scruton recalling his experience of the soixante-huitard riots that took place while he was a student in Paris. The destructiveness of his fellow colleagues, their righteous indignation, the shallowness and irrationality of their anger produced such an impression on Roger, that he knew right then he wanted nothing to do with anything these pampered narcissists stood for, and decided he would oppose them in any way he could. I had a very similar journey away from liberalism and the fashionable strands of thought forming the contemporary consensus. If you are a dissident of any kind, you certainly have your own tale to tell. A deep sense of betrayal is what unifies these experiences and since this is one of the strongest emotions humans can experience, it has an enormous destructive potential along with its promise of meaning and catharsis. Anti-Feminists, Anti-SJW, Anti-Marxists The first natural reaction against betrayal is the desire for revenge. Those who were wronged by the System(s) find fellowship and acceptance in newly formed groups that vehemently oppose and aim to punish the traitor(s). Revenge fantasies are an effective binding moral foundation in the short term. They go all the way back to archaic societies, where youth banded together for the purpose of ‘headhunting’ – killing members of foreign tribes and collecting their scalps or other tokens, which earned prestige for the hunters and strengthened in-group bonds. In terms of high instability, such as the Viking conquest of Britain, even warring tribes and kingdoms left aside their minor wars and dynastic disputes and found togetherness in opposing the foreign invaders. The deep sense of betrayal experienced by young straight white men over the last decade certainly fostered a reaction to the accelerating ideologisation of the Establishment. What do you do when all educational and broadcasting institutions condemn you in unison for immutable traits or preferences that until yesterday had been considered benign or even positive? You become ANTI-. All of a sudden, opposing the traitor is your main priority. The trouble is you must first be able to define the treason. Describe the traitor, understand his motivations, do a bit of ‘theory of mind‘ and delineate him from other non-harmful or non-involved entities. Here we find that the active trauma prevents the betrayed from successfully understanding and delineating their opponents. The immediate urge is to catastrophise and turn your enemy into a preternatural, all-knowing and all-willing malefic entity. You lash out in all directions, interrogating neutral bystanders and associating them with the enemy if their revenge fantasies are not as vivid as yours. This is where we see the limits of negative ethno-centrism or headhunting binding behaviours. All that unites you and your new buddies is the opposition to the traitor. Everything else is up for debate. And if your IQ allows you to perceive nuance, you soon realise the fight does not take place on an axis of villainy-to-goodness ranging from -∞ to +∞. Even the normie political compass posits the existence of two axes. What if reality is 3d or 4d? Your betrayal revealed to you a single point in 3d space, which we can all agree is nasty and despicable. Maybe we can identify a spherical orbit, gravitating around it – the wicked ideology and its acolytes, gatekeepers, volunteers and opportunists. We all recoil and move away from their presence, but soon discover away can mean almost any direction, and nothing is guiding you and your buddies to move in unison. Because you lack a positive binding ethos, a first principle acting as a common good guiding you in interstellar space, you drift apart and splinter in a series of unforeseen disagreements over issues you never knew would come up. Only the Left can pull this off If the NRX movement has unearthed anything of value, it is its description of the political left as a force of societal erosion and entropy. Being ‘anti’ has always been a thing of the left and one must acknowledge they pull it off with a certain degree of grace and talent. If being a contrarian is your thing, if you find meaning in unrelenting deconstruction, snitching and deboonking, if you find yourself always rooting for characters like Caesar in the latest Planet of the Apes, consider transitioning and coming up with a degenerate pseudonym or something. The left are quite comfortable with drifting apart in a pleasant ecstasy; with loosening ties and denouncing bonds of every sort; with toying with revenge fantasies without ever healing the wounds that produced them. For a conservative to occupy this role is self-defeating. You must come to terms with your betrayal and find a positive meaning for it. If you fail to find a philosophy that will unite your movement, your mental energies will be drained by the same revenge fantasies, cynicism and hatred of your foes. And these very energies fuel the monster the left has created. I am not only referring to the top news outlets and social media platforms of our age, harvesting rage and divisiveness in the autistic interest of their CEOs; but more importantly, to the various activists and lobby groups that have come to predict the dissidents’ reactions so accurately, that they can press all the emotional pedals making you react in exactly the ways they want you to react. When you are ANTI – , you will do everything within your power to oppose your foes. Of this they can be certain. They want to associate you with the anti-vax or climate change denial movement? They will be pro vaccines and pro climate change. They want you to embrace the public school system? They will lobby for school lockdowns. They want you to LARP as their cartoon villain, giving them a good excuse to censor you? They will claim whoever opposes them is fascistic. In this way they can concern troll you endlessly. Still, despite acknowledging these realities, the urge to monitor the foe and keep the outrage alive is unstoppable. The wound did not heal a bit, the act of treason is so fresh in your memory, it seems to have occurred yesterday. Letting go of it threatens to shatter life’s meaning, so you remain prisoner in this death grip. Betrayal and its Psychological Reactions James Hillman, one of Carl Jung’s close disciples, wrote an enlightening paper on betrayal in the Guild of Pastoral Psychology’s Journal, the issue of October 1964. I will try to sum it up in the following lines, listing what Hillman identifies as the psychological reactions to betrayal and what he thinks are the solutions to each of them. First Hillman talks about ‘primal trust’ as a naïve state of childhood in which one cannot even imagine that their father or authority figure can betray them. This trust does not coexist with uncertainty (for children, their parents are almost god-like) nor can it tolerate the thought that parents are flawed and imperfect. After establishing this idea, Hillman lists the reactions to betrayal as they tend to occur over time: a. Revenge. When refined into indirect methods, revenge fantasies can become obsessional, shifting and shrinking the focus from the significance of the betrayal to the betrayer and his shadow . Remembering the act becomes petty, mean and loveless. To minimise this effect, Aquinas considered revenge to be justified only against the larger evil that has been committed, not the person of the perpetrator. b. Denial. I notice the other person’s shadow and its horrible demons, compensating for prior idealisations of primal trust. My anima was previously silent and I chose to ignore it because I really wanted to trust the father figure (or religious / political / educational system). Before betrayal – the feeling judgments (anima) were not admitted into consciousness; after the betrayal, the anima awakens, becomes my dominant side, and thus the relationship with the traitor is denied by the anima’s resentments. ‘They were always horrible, we were never friends, there was nothing there to begin with’ etc. c. Cynicism – all love becomes a Cheat, causes are for the Saps, organisations Traps, hierarchies Evil, mentorship, therapy or confession nothing but prostitution, brainwashing and fraud. ‘Keep sharp, watch out. Get the other before he gets you. Never trust anyone again. We live in a dog-eat-dog world.’ I cannot find a positive meaning for the betrayal, so I enter a vicious cycle, and the dog chases his own tail. I begin sneering against my own star, I betray my own ideals and ambitions as created by the puer archetype. When the child crashes, everything to do with him is rejected. We probably saw this manifested best in the New Atheism movement and in all cultural movements of the left, with their fixation on individualistic intuitions and a complete suspicion of everyone’s motives. d. Self-Betrayal. My previous ideals and my highly charged hopes are now seen as pure sentimental rubbish. The alchemical process is reversed: I turn gold into faeces. My hardly earned pearls are thrown before swine – I have become the swine; I take my former ideals and deconstruct them through materialistic explanations, reductionism and dumb simplicities of sex-drive and milk-hunger. What I had thought to be the best was really the worst. I act in the same blind and sordid way as I claim my betrayer is acting, because I use an alien value system. I refuse to be what I am to avoid getting hurt again. Hillman’s final advice is: ‘don’t let down the essential demand on the ego: to take up and carry one’s own suffering and be what one is no matter how it hurts.’ The biggest stumbling block in the healing process is no doubt finding a positive meaning for the betrayal, which can be seen as minimising its significance or ignoring the malignant aspects of the traitor. That is not what Hillman is arguing for. Rather, we must take everything life throws at us, good or bad, and repurpose it for some greater good. ‘What does not kills you makes you stronger’ and all that. Jolly Conclusions Going through the stages listed above can be extremely unpleasant for dissidents, especially when the so-called expert uses Hillman as an ideological weapon, arguing that society writ large is completely fine, and the problems we are attempting to solve politically or culturally reside mainly inside our head, as the effects of some irrelevant past trauma. This has been done to me and want to be clear I am NOT doing any of that. Society is NOT at all fine; in fact the past 8 years have led to an acceleration of all the corrosive trends of modernity, liberalism and Enlightenment lies. I fully believe we are witnessing an almost global phenomenon of mass hysteria among the wider populace and an attempt by various elites to engineer such destabilising experimental change that the 1st, 2nd and 3rd industrial revolution (to use the language of our foes) will pale in comparison. In fact I believe the problems stem from an intellectual and psychological attitude that elevates the victim mentality and wants to immortalise every sense of betrayal – perceived or imagined – in our culture’s collective memory, so that the four types of reaction against it – revenge, denial, cynicism, self betrayal – sold as liberation struggles – become enshrined as the core virtues of our liberal societies. All the cool kids will own nothing, eat the bugs and be happy, because being ‘anti-‘ some dead horse will occupy their entire mental bandwidth. Being conservative or reactionary implies the obstinate refusal to succumb to this tendency. Their treachery must be given a positive meaning, and this can only be done in relation to a positive belief in a higher good. We were never meant to linger forever in a childhood state of primal trust; if betrayal was the means of taking us out of there, we must attempt to be grateful for it. This does not mean the establishment is not responsible for its ills, corruption or mendacity, nor that we should abandon our concerns about their acts of subversion. It means, however, that we have to take these strong reactions and ‘offer them up’ in some way or another; harvest the negative emotions under the guidance of some higher virtue, be it religious worship, grace and magnanimity, or dispassionate clear headed strategies that will help us live and even thrive under the continuous acts of treachery we are being subjected to. I believe Scruton managed to achieve this better than anyone else.... The Inevitable Failure of CentrismJuly 5, 2021I like Rifftrax. Although their comedic film commentary is pretty shallow, I much prefer watching bad films with their stand-up routine than any stand-alone contemporary flick taking itself seriously. A while ago I was watching M. Night Shyamalan’s trainwreck adaptation of ‘The Last Airbender’ with Rifftrax. At some point, this princess Yue stares in the eyes of her beloved and tells him in a dramatic tone: ‘It is time we show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs!’ This is immediately followed by Rifftrax’s punchline: ‘I don’t believe that you believe in your beliefs! Believe it!’ The tone, the inflexions of the voice, the knee jerk style of their irony is ubiquitous in today’s culture. As Westerners we have lived for so long with this disembodied, mass produced entertainment masquerading as culture, that the only reaction we find normal to anyone taking their beliefs seriously is meta-irony. It suits us like a glove; the more layers of irony and cynicism, the better. Any midwit understands it and is able to engage in it. There was a time when – believe it or not – our predecessors used to believe in their beliefs as much as Muslims or Hindus do today. Even modernity, with its many currents of thought – used to take itself seriously and believe in its project of engineering a better future for the human race through unleashed technology, scientific endeavour, sexual liberation, the spirit of history or whatever it chose to name its monomaniacal project. Of course, the ideas of universalism were bound to end up in hopelessness and cynicism. The reasons are manifold, and it’s understandable that leftists would end up criticising modernity more thoroughly than any other group. What begins in revolution ends in revolution; and according to Prof. John Rao, the best way to understand modernity is as a revolution against the Incarnation. A complete rejection of the concrete in favour of the abstract. We thus find ourselves in this strange place where only Postmodern pessimists and Marxists are earnest in their beliefs, while everyone else floats in a sea of confusion and relativity. When this earnest activism fully surfaced in pop culture around 2012, with the coming of age of woke Millenials, a lot of us knew for sure that THIS new phenomenon is madness. However we chose to label it, and for whatever reasons we chose to oppose it, we KNEW that this ever-growing hydra is degenerate and evil and must be opposed by any means. Thus we have witnessed the emergence of the Centrist commentator. People like Sargon of Akkad, Gad Saad, Vee, Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Bret Weinstein, James Lyndsay and many many others – have emerged as popular opponents to the Social Justice ideology. Most of these guys chose to fall back on the Modern meta-narrative as a shield against Progressive talking points, lamenting the ways in which wokery undermines our beloved ‘Enlightenment values’. It is never clear what they mean when they ritualistically invoke said values. Do they think of Rousseau, Kant, Hume or Montesquieu? The very authors who are regarded by many secular thinkers as the originators of Postmodern relativism? Or to they think of the autistic Locke or Stuart Mill, living in an abstract universe of contractarianism and self-centred consensual agreements? The kind of thinkers de Jouvenel referred to as ‘childless men who must have forgotten their own childhood’? Or maybe what they really mean is the Newtonian revolution and the reconceptualisation of the universe as clockwork machinery, following predictable causal chains, leaving no room for ‘lived experience’ or postmodern relativism. However you look at it, it’s impossible not to notice the shalowness of Centrist commentators when it comes to their invoked positive values. It is no wonder that most of the guys mentioned above have become massive grifters, sacrificing their earlier curiosity and genuine intellectual pursuit. The more interesting commentators were those who started to understand the value of traditional communities with harmonious beliefs, graceful metaphysical foundations and organic institutions that reflected their ideals through beautiful places of worship, music, architecture. I count Peterson among these commentators, and it would be unfair to reduce him to his boomer neoconservative talking points or ‘Rules for Life’ grift. Jonathan Haidt followed a similar trajectory with his research into the moral foundations theory, or the elephant and the rider. A few years ago I was following this centrist Youtube commentator, Adam Friended, who was an enthusiastic follower of both Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt. Even though he was a non-believer, he was starting to understand the reasons in favour of religiousness. As a binding behaviour, religion is crucial in the formation of stable communities. Whenever a group of people chooses to value something, in-fighting stops, so they can all focus on a common ideal; something akin to electricity is produced, as the group circles the sacred value like in a merry-go-round; beautiful art emerges; the individuals transcend the self-centred, egotistical mindset and can find transcendence together. Now, of course, sacralising a given value makes us blind to everything that’s not encompassed in it. ‘Morality binds and blinds’, but the reverse is much worse, because it implies falling into an atomised, distrustful state of primal vigilance. Adam Friended was also fascinated with Peterson’s arguments in favour of religiousness at the individual level. You cannot live without an ideal; your life will turn into complete chaos if your impulses are not oriented in a hierarchy of values. And the highest ideal we can think of is ‘the hero of a thousand faces’ or whatever. Christ is thus, not a mere evolutionary mistake, as Dawkins claimed; some parasitic ‘meme’ that subverted our development as a species. At the political level, centrists were starting to realise the necessity of embracing a belief system. Right wing movements dominated by secularism and a merely cultural appreciation of religion are feeble, non-committed and ineffectual. Armed with these rational arguments in favour of religion and a timid, shallow conservatism, Friended became Peterson and Haidt’s bulldog, defending them from rationalist, new atheist types. He realised the euphoric atheism of the 2000s was not merely a lack of belief, but a utopian form of anti-theism positing that the complete removal of homo religiosus would magically bring about a better, more rational or empirically oriented society. The stupidity and hybris of such a worldview was easy to notice for everyone familiar with Peterson or Haidt. Thus, the rebuttals almost wrote themselves. Friended condemned the impertinence and superficiality of knee-jerk atheists like Rationality Rules or others like him; he exposed them for what they were – uneducated internet opportunists armed with a list of internet fallacies and a naïve childish scientism. Their entire shtick was to loudly deboonk some personality, causing drama and controversy, and thus increase their audience. Their deboonking was never done in good faith and all they did was strawman their opponent and go for low hanging fruit. Adam continued to mock these grifters, along with the general anti-SJW commentary which came naturally and wrote itself by merely reading the news. Still, this type of centrist could not find the vision and inner strength to actually embrace a clear belief system; to move from the passive appreciation of a detached outsider, to a full dive into the Sacred. As time passed, the only archetype that prevailed in his case was that of the deboonker; the mocker and scoffer. It became a second nature and therefore his rebranding as a ‘comedian’ appeared natural. How else would this type of internet anti-SJW shitlord call himself? They were never serious scholars. They could never commit to a clear philosophical or religious path. All they did was popularised certain authors while mocking others. Thus they fell back into the very Postmodern condition they claimed to oppose. Like the virgin Calvinists and Lutherans of the 16th century, the only virtues exalted by centrists are temperance and moderation. They do not excel in any field; they do not commit to any path; they are at the crossroads. They criticise Marxism; they criticise Monarchism. They appreciate laissez-faire, ‘live and let live, man’, refusing to admit the ills of modern de-territorialisation and desecration. Had they done a deep dive into the culture they claim to defend, they would have realised the shallowness of this neoconservatism that literally conserved nothing. Had they found God, they would have realised the pernicious nature of this deification of ‘the divine individual’. Had they actually read Jung and Eliade, they would have realised the shallowness of Peterson’s lazy mythological schema, while accepting the superiority of Ev0la and Guenon. But they did none of these things; their development was completely arrested in a state of Californian manchildhood. When they eventually came face to face with serious men who went all the way on a spiritual or intellectual path, they were as baffled and perplexed as they were when noticing the rise of the SJW phenomenon. ‘These unironic Christian / traditionalist / hermeticist Chads ackshually believe in their beliefs as much as Muslims and femenists believe in theirs. WTF?’ Their inability to be serious and focused became painfully obvious. The centrist mind exploded; they could not fathom how a human being can actually hold certain values to be sacred and raise them above instant self-gratification or lazy meta-irony. The only reaction someone like Adam could conjure up against Academic Agent or Dave the Distributist was knee-jerk mockery. He lazily laughed at them for hours in a row in the company of dubious anarchists; they retorted to the most childish and lazy type of humour – name calling, while mocking Bowden, Toynbee (‘tomboy’) and Ev0la (‘ebola’), authors they could not even bother to google before criticising. They retorted to the very leftist strategies they routinely mocked in people further to their left. When AA and Dave responded with measured intellectual arguments, Friended could not even muster the courage to listen to their videos, employing some obscure fanboy mook to sum up their content into a list of straw manned talking points. As he was confronted with serious conservatives and religious scholars, he fell back into the posture of Rationality Rules and the shallow internet deboonker. Whenever any of his claims would be refuted, he would hide behind layers of irony, claiming that his content had been comedic all along. The sad story of centrism in the 21st century is that of a path of cowardice. You are scared shitless of shedding the post-WW2 truth regime, for fear of falling into the pre-made boogeyman of the establishment. So instead of seeing through the lies of the various strands of liberalism, you cling onto the most benign and outdated form of modernity, only to be allowed some breadcrumbs under the table of the established leaders. They could not even bring themselves to embrace libertarianism to its logical conclusions, which would fall outside of the Overton window; so they only embrace it when it suits their momentary motives. Centrism and its pet projects (freedom of speech, freedom of trade, individual rights) can never be values of supreme importance in a civilisation, because all liberal values are post-values, instrumental at best. The modern liberal individual is a mental abstraction built on the delusional idea of a detached, objective observer. ‘The view from nowhere’. Although we have all been indoctrinated in this view since childhood, it is in fact a collective mental ilness. Every people or nation used to ‘believe in their beliefs’. We are the first ones to find that fact strange, to seek this faux reconciliatory attitude of forcefully finding positives in the superficialities of all cultures and religions, without committing to anything in particular. It’s like being an art critic who has studied an introduction into every art movement in history, without having committed to any technical path, with its austere methods and the hard work required for mastery. While listening to Adam Friended’s trainwreck of attempted mockery, I realised the only thing he has left is the hollow meta-ironic tone identical to that of Rifftrax. Why so serious? Just a comedy show, bro, just a comedy show.... The Endless (2018) – Sacred and Profane TimeMay 25, 2021Phœbus in the western main / Sinks; but swift his car againBy a secret path is borne / To the wonted gates of morn.Thus are all things seen to yearn / In due time for due return;And no order fixed may stay, / Save which in th’ appointed wayJoins the end to the beginning / In a steady cycle spinning” – Boethius When I first watched ‘The Endless’ (2018), shortly after the film had been released, I enjoyed it for the lovecraftian sense of Cosmic horror, but I also remember feeling deep sympathy for the members of the desert cult and the monster/deity that was leading them. I have re-watched it today and enjoyed it just as much as the first time, if not more. I still could not agree to the conclusions it presented, but I get the sense that the film managed to zero in on some things of great significance and timeless quality. The film is specifically about timelesness, or the contrast between linear profane time and the cyclical, sacred time of the gods. The protagonists are two brothers, Justin and Aaron, orphaned in childhood when their parents died in a car crash, rescued and raised by the members of a desert cult, Camp Arcadia. Having grown up, they had decided to leave the cult behind, smear it in front of the press and return to wider society. After ten years, realising they still failed to adapt to contemporary society, despite periodic therapy sessions and failed attempts at socialising, Aaron receives a video cassette from Anna, an attractive female member of the cult, luring him and his brother into visiting Camp Arcadia once again. They decide to do it for one day only, just so they can find closure and leave that chapter behind them. After arriving at the camp, the pleasant activities, the friendliness they experience, as well as the slow rhythm of life and the promise of divine revelation makes Aaron want to re-join the cult for good. I will not go into the details of the plot, for those who haven’t seen it. Instead I will focus on the philosophical themes brought forth by the filmmakers. On the second evening of their stay, as they are gathered around the campfire, the two brothers overhear Shane, one of the cult members, saying: ‘You know, Tolkien said it, Lewis said it, Lovecraft perverted it, and we just take the definite face off of it and we just say, “Hey, here are the tools, but you make it what you want.”‘ It appears Shane was referring to the ancient definition of the Sacred or the Archetypal, as the eternal, cyclical time-space of the gods, in which mortals can partake through rites of initiation, sacramental communion and sacrifices. All these elements are there in the film; the members of Camp Arcadia had waited for the two brothers to fully mature before they could be approached by the daimon of that place; the god (or monster, depending on your perspective) that clearly references the ancient Roman notion of ‘genius loci’ or its Norse equivalent, the ‘Landvættur’. The deity communicates with the cultists through visual representations – literal footage or photography that shows them what it sees through its very own eyes. The visuals come in pairs, with the first focusing on the person being watched, while the second pointing to a place of pilgrimage, some tent, camper van or other facility where the person is supposed to discover their purpose in life, in relation to the community. As one may recall from Eliade’s work, all ancient myths revealed the primordial establishment of archetypal activities, of work and leisure, of hunting, cultivating the land; marriage and child birth, war and peace. For the ancients, life had meaning to the extent to which their mundane activities were reflections of these primordial founding acts; in other words, to the extent to which the profane was infused with the sacred. As Aaron notices at the camp gathering, everyone there had a thing (or two or three) like a hobby that they practiced and perfected over time. This hobby is implied to have been revealed to each member by the Deity itself, establishing their role within the community. While Aaron appears enticed by this meaningful existence in connection to the Sacred, his brother Justin cannot shake the suspicion that underneath all of this lurks a horrible, monstrous truth, which he is about to discover. The Modern Rejection of the Sacred The small mindedness of modernity rears its dreary head in the film’s casual critique of the Sacred. It appears modern man is capable of singing one very predictable tune – that of radical autonomy as the crowning of the human condition. Even Hal, the alleged cult leader, though fully devoted to the local deity, asks himself in a moment of doubt: “Can you have power over yourself if you give up any amount of authority to something else?” The modern mind is incapable of conceptualising powers and principalities; esse and essence; head and body, or participation in a higher whole. Hal himself confesses that if he weren’t so left brained (literally his words!), he might realise the problem he was trying to solve is not a matter of either/or. The left brain likes to conceptualise the human being as radically self-willing and autonomous, determining every outcome through the laser beam of its focused attention. Whatever parts of our psyche (or outer world) lie OUTSIDE of this laser beam, they are simply labeled as ‘non-existent’ and denied vehemently. It thinks that once it turned off the lights on the stage, the furniture layout simply ceases to exist. The left hemisphere’s wilful denial is made apparent by its obfuscation of its very inputs received from OUTSIDE its own realm. In other words, the modern conceptualisation of the individual as a self-enclosed Universe with natural rights and the incentive to pursue happiness – is not only a delusion of grandeur, but a self-refuting proposal and a reliance on the very thing it wishes to deny. A child mistaking his pocket money for his own hard-earned income. No object of perception can be declared autonomous or entirely sovereign; everything participates in a higher fabric of reality. Our thoughts, our impulses, our moral imperatives, are not willed into existence by the I or the Ego; they have a numinous character and a life of their own. Our goal is not to become fully autonomous (i.e. to will every minuscule aspect of our pop culture Golem identity, or sever ourselves from anything that is not willed directly in this manner), but to participate in various patterns of being-there. Conceptualising humans in this way helps us understand them not as atomised, self-contained Universes, but as participants (holons, fractals) in patterns greater than their nodes. What are these patterns? is the question we need to ask ourselves. The ancients called them ‘principalities’, ‘gods’, ‘essences’, ‘angels’. One’s entrance into one of these greater patterns is the ascension into the Sacred; the transition from linear, profane time, to cyclical, endless time. The transition from Chronos – the dull time measured by the clock and the pursuit of base desires – to Kairos, the mythopoietic, timeless state of aesthetic contemplation. When viewed from this perspective, the lines of dialogue between the two brothers make a lot more sense, especially where they are wrong: Justin: You want to die over and over and live your life on repeat!Aaron: You act like i’m the first person in history that actually wants to live forever with people that like him! There’s not much difference between being stuck in a loop and repeating the same shitty day over and over like back home until I die.Justin: but back home anything could happen. It could be so much better than the camp!Aaron: Yea, we tried that, man. For almost a decade. And I’m ready to go back to not hating my life! Dying just takes a second, and a shitty life is long!Justin: Aaron, I think you are making a very, very big decision with very little thought. And you realise that you do this once and you can never leave?!Aaron: Anything is better than the life you make me live! When the self-interested, left brained modern individual (‘homo incurvatus in se’) attempts to conceptualise kairos, he thinks of a nightmarish loop of boredom and dispair. Aaron notices that his actual self-centred life is already IN that hell, thanks to his patronising left-brained elder brother, not the cult. We can all empathise with Aaron while we witness modernity destroy every vestige of meaning, of truth, goodness and beauty, in the name of abstract imperatives of self-willing, self-determination, radical equality, radical self-interest. While every escape from the hall of mirrors is ritually demonised and brutally severed by the priestly caste of utility, efficiency and linear teleological progress, we are arriving at the sobering realisation that we are about to enter a cyclical hell of addictions, compulsive consumption, Sisyphean texting, scrolling, arguing and sharing. We ARE being harvested and sacrificed on the altar of a disturbing principality, a spirit of a place we cannot comprehend; a monster whose outer shape we can barely start to discern. When a modern intellectual is brought to this realisation, instead of opening up to the importance of the metaphysics of participation, he dodges the epiphany by instead embracing yet another clicheic punchline: ‘it was Justin’s fault all along, man’! The ‘Big Brother’ category lights up in his mind, and that is the end of his intelligent thought. The following lines from the film are as boring as they are self explanatory: “Let him drive the fucking car. Big brother messes up everything. But you’re family, and that’s what family does. Aaron: All I ever wanted is mess up our lives just as much as you do. Justin: I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life if I leave you here, so I guess I’m staying too. Aaron: You’re respecting my decision to stay? Alright, let’s go. All I ever wanted was…” No, you sorry loser! You think you wanted to self-will your life; to self-determine your identity. If only YOU could call the shots instead of the tyrranical Big Brother cliche, or other social squabbles you invoke like a fucking spastic whenever you’re on the brink of escaping the modern hall of mirrors. Like the philosopher Jagger once said, ‘You can’t always get what you want / But if you try sometime you find / You get what you need’. Sorry to burst the bubble, but more modernity will NOT get us out of the hall of mirrors. A few days ago when I was planning on rewatching’The Endless’, I could not remember its name, so I had to scroll through my Watch history on Amazon Prime in order to find it. Although the endeavour was fruitless, it made me realise I have virtually no significant memories from the past 5 years. All days blend into the same monotony. No highs, no lows; the flicks I watched blend into one another seamlessly; a feeble quest for kairos, for the Sacred, lazily attempted through consumption and facile gratification. It doesn’t work this way and none of us is far from Aaron’s realisation. The only significant question left to explore – never discovered by Millenial bugmen lost in the endless labyrinth of giants and their kin – is the nature of these Principalities, genii loci or landvaettir. What are the patterns we should seek to participate in? What types of sacrifices should we perform in this endeavour? What is the nature of the sacraments they demand from us? Remember kids, if you don’t ask this sort of questions, you will still participate in something; it better not be a downward spiral of death and despair. And if you compare the two protagonists with Hal, the thoughful, respectful leader of Camp Arcadia, it’s not hard to tell who manifests virtues and who doesn’t. But it’s always easy to smear Hal once you have left Arcadia, to portray him as some humourless, castrated cult leader, while you greedily guzzle your Twitter views and social media influence. Hal: What we do know is that it shows us what it sees. It has a powerful elegance to it.... Curtis Yarvin on a potential restoration of artMay 23, 2021The following paragraphs are excerpts from Yarvin’s substack article titled ‘The Frivolity of the Pundit Right‘. In this polemical article (addressed to one Scott Alexander) he engages in an interesting thought experiment about a potential restoration of art education. “The essential problem with Alexander’s picture of this process is that, since like most smart people today he inhabits Cicero’s great quote about history and children, he simply cannot imagine replacing one kind of elite institution with another. Nor can he imagine high-IQ elites—human beings as smart as him—which are as loyal to a new sane monarchy as today’s elites are loyal, slavishly loyal, to our old insane oligarchy. Does he think that Elizabeth’s London had no elites? Caesar’s Rome? If Alexander was analyzing the Soviet Union in the same way, he would conclude that elites are inherently devoted to building socialism for the workers and peasants. Since the present world he lives in is all of history for him, he cannot see the general theory which predicts this special case: elites like to get ahead. To genuinely change the world, change what it takes for elites to get ahead. If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of “race opera,” as my late wife liked to put it, the floodgates of race opera will open. If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of Stalin hagiography, Stalin will be praised to the skies in beautiful and clever rhymes. While either an oligarchy or a monarchy can do better than this, and the oligarchy we have once did—it never will again. Entropy is an arrow. Monarchy, like every form of government, can be good or bad. The principle of charity requires you to assume that we monarchists are proposing a good monarchy—but it is still on us to explain how we get, and keep, a good one. Scott Alexander: “When elites use the government to promote elite culture, this usually looks like giving grants to the most promising up-and-coming artists recommended by the art schools themselves, and having the local art critics praise their taste and acumen. When the populace uses the government to promote popular culture against elite culture, this usually looks like some hamfisted attempt to designate some kind of “official” style based on what popular stereotypes think is “real art from back in the day when art was good,” which every art school and art critic attacks as clueless Philistinism. Every artist in the country will make groundbreaking exciting new art criticizing the government’s poor judgment, while the government desperately looks for a few technicians willing to take their money and make, I don’t know, pretty landscape paintings or big neoclassical buildings”. No. There are two big strawmen here. Let’s turn them into steelmen. First, “the populace uses the government” is non-Burkean. The populace (not all of it, just the middle class) installs the government. Then it goes back to grilling. So long as the commoners have to be in charge of the regime, and the commoners are weak, the regime will be weak. They need to “fire and forget.” Otherwise, they just lose. Second, Alexander has clearly never heard of the atelier movement. No, this is not the same thing as your grandma in front of the TV copying Bob Ross. What happens is this: every (oligarchic) art school and art critic no longer exists. Not that they are killed, of course. Just that their employers are liquidated (not with a bullet in the neck, just with a letter from the bank). They exist physically, not professionally. They were already bureaucrats—they had careers, not passions. Who gets fired, but keeps doing his job just for fun? Certainly not a bureaucrat. And every (oligarchic) artist no longer exists—not that they are killed, of course. Just that the rich socialites who used to buy their stuff got letters from the bank, too. Libs sometimes talk about a wealth tax—a one-time wealth cap, perhaps at a modest level like $20 mil, will concentrate the rich man’s mind wonderfully on actual necessities. Elites like to get ahead. The people who got ahead in the oligarchic art scene can no longer get ahead by doing shitty, bureaucratic, 20th-century conceptual art. Because there were so many of them, and because the demand for this product has dropped by at least one order of magnitude if not two, elite ambition is replaced by elite revulsion. The enormous supply-and-demand imbalance for both art and artists in 20th-century styles leaves these styles about as fashionable as disco in 1996. “Paintings” that used to sell for eight figures will be stacked next to the dumpster. “Artists” once celebrated in the Times will be teaching kindergarten, tying trout flies, or cooking delicious dinners. Inevitably, some of these people have real artistic talent. (The first modern artists had real talent—Picasso was an excellent draftsman.) They can go to an atelier and learn to draw. They will—because now, acquiring real artistic skill is a way to get ahead in art. And again, elites like to get ahead. Not only does the new regime patronize and promote the ateliers, just as the old regime promoted its degenerate art, it creates a market for their products. Prizes and official commissions are great—but a real king can be even more creative. What if the photo on your driver’s license wasn’t a photo? What if it had to be… a portrait?” Scott Alexander: The important point is that elite government can govern with a light touch, because everything naturally tends towards what they want and they just need to shepherd it along. But popular/anti-elite government has a strong tendency toward dictatorship, because it won’t get what it wants without crushing every normal organic process. Thus the stereotype of the “right-wing strongman”, who gets busy with the crushing.So the idea of “right-wing populism” might invoke this general concept of somebody who, because they have made themselves the champion of the populace against the elites, will probably end up incentivized to crush all the organic processes of civil society, and yoke culture and academia to the will of government in a heavy-handed manner. There is nothing “normal” or “natural” or “organic” about oligarchy. Does Alexander think “uncured” bacon is “organic” because, instead of evil chemical nitrates, it uses healthy, natural celery powder? He sure is easy to fool. But who isn’t? Culture and academia is already yoked to the will of government in a “heavy-handed manner”—yoked not by the positive pressure of power, but the negative attraction of power. When the formal government defers to institutions that are formally outside the government, it leaks power into them and makes them de facto state agencies. Power leakage, like a pig lagoon spilling into an alpine lake, poisons the marketplace of ideas with delicious nutrients. Ideas that make the institutions more powerful grow wildly. Eventually these ideas evolve carnivory and learn to positively repress their competitors, which is how our free press and our independent universities have turned our regime into Czechoslovakia in 1971, and our conversation into a Hutu Power after-school special. PS: Black lives matter. The paradox of “authoritarianism” is that a regime strong enough to implement Frederick the Great’s idea of “free speech”—“they say what they want, I do what I want”—can actually create a free and unbiased marketplace of ideas, which neither represses seditious ideas nor rewards carnivorous ideas . I have never been able to explain this simple idea to anyone, even rationalists with 150+ IQs who can grok quantum computing before breakfast, who didn’t want to understand it. Ultimately it reduces to the painful realization that sovereignty is conserved—that the power of man over man is a human universal. (Also, we all die.) No surprise that nerds who think of power as Chad shoving them into a locker can’t handle the truth. PS: I went to a public high school as a 12-year-old sophomore, was bullied every day for three years, and graduated college as a virgin. Whoever you are, dear reader, you are not beyond hope. You can handle the truth.... Email Address Subscribe
