It's right to stress the importance of Occupy Wall Street, but in terms of defining a catalytic event which tipped the culture into its current zeitgeist, It would have to be Nick Hanauer's August 2014 TED Talk 'Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming'. Don't get me wrong- Ross Douthat coined the phrase 'Woke Capitalism' in 2015, and yes, the deeply flawed availability heuristic of incredibly rare police brutality cases against unarmed Black men certainly played a role in allowing social media to remove the educational partitions which had rightly kept the Grievance Studies a trendy, yet lunatic fringe set of fields, within Academia- serving as a means of exposition to a phenomenon entirely manufactured by corporate media wishing to impose narratives which were entirely fictional as means of grabbing attention in a fiercely competive market. Black kids shot with toy guns with elevated to the national news. White kids shot in the exact same circumstances barely made the local news. Everybody knows the name of George Floyd, but few know of Tony Timpa- even though his YouTube video is a harrowing 13 minutes long, as opposed to St. George's 8 minutes. Same dog, old trick- the same methods once use to vilify smear and defame an entire generation of young Black men were now being used to the same effect on White men in blue uniforms. Just desserts, some might say, until one considers that it was Left-leaning liberal politicians and lawyers who shafted young Black Male America- not the police officers compelled by policy to follow their draconian legal mandates.
The 'Pitchforks' TED Talk frightened and galvanized establishment, institutional and corporate America in a way that few other purely memetic events have. It's why the 'Pitchforks' TED Talk immediately joined a very short list of popular TED Talks by credible speakers which have ever been banned. Rupert Sheldrake was another (although admittedly *some* of his ideas are pretty fringe). Coleman Hughes would likely also have joined the honour roll, for his talk on the importance of colour-blindness, had TED not long since learned the attention-drawing lessons of outright bans.
'Pitchforks' served a purpose in terms of resourcing and amplification. Suddenly what had been a cynical exercise in PR, a means of liability shielding and corporate branding gained the impetus of necessity, as a means to divert a looming existential crisis. To the surface level viewer, fed on the narrative of private vs. public antagonism and Left-liberal disdain for capitalism, this might seem implausible- but one has to remember that as a class, they all went to the same elite schools. They are friends and intimate acquaintances who protect each others backs. We saw the same thing with the GameStop Revolution, as Left corporate media immediately stood against the movement, going so far as to circulate a scam silver short squeeze as a means of a particular hedge fund to recoup their billion dollar losses, before finally releasing the mass mood was against them, even amongst their own target demo, and quickly changing their tune.
What they never imagined is that their cynical Divide et Impera play to maintain the neo-feudal status quo of the blue collar class, would ultimately backfire and derange an entire generation of the college educated, barring a small minority of dissenters and a larger core of cowards fearful for their jobs and pensions. They gravely underestimated the power of baseless accusation-many a CEO came to fear and dread the authority of their HR director.
They didn't understand the nature of the beast they were unleashing. History could have taught them- the Nazis, Robespierre, the Soviet origins of the word PC, the Cultural Revolution. Weaponizing resentment along arbitrary group lines, unless conceived as an appeal to justice and common humanity, is always a terrible idea. But unity wasn't their aim- instead it was disunity. They wanted to disrupt a growing class interest between blue collar Whites, Blacks and Hispanics- indeed, all the demographics increasingly intent upon voting for Trump later this year...
Here's a good analogy- the VIP lounge of a nightclub. The 1% (or 0.1%) own the club. The 9% are allowed access to the VIP lounge, provided they pay lip service to woke orthodoxies (if they are really good little boys and girls, they get comped drinks or the occasional Happy Hour). Woke is an attempt to tokenise and recruit the children of the most successful from every ethnicity, whilst determinedly keeping the meritocratically superior children of the riffraff out in the cold. They don't give a shit about the other 95% to 98% of African Americans or Hispanics. Only 3% of the Woke are Black. Regurgitation of the political and cultural creed is compulsory. Big names like Charlemagne can get away with bemoaning the fact that most people weren't consulted about the medicalisation of 'trans' kids- but for anyone else, deviation from the script on any issue is a punishable offence. Black men cannot question patriarchy, even though by any measure, they are worse off than Black women. Lesbians cannot question whether a trans woman with a penis is compatible with their *sexual* preferences. Believe it or not, there really are studies out there, extremely puzzled why, of those willing to be trans inclusive in their dating, 50% of lesbians are willing to date trans men and 50% are willing to date trans women- without asking the question does the trans lesbian have a penis...
Have you read Rob Henderson's Luxury Beliefs? Because the children of the plebs had started wearing Timberlands, Burberry, and had finally clocked the trick about wearing expensive designer goods with no labels (which only people from the same class could recognise), the new luxury good to define elite status became luxury beliefs- which cost cultural and economic elites nothing, but cost anyone living in the real world a great deal.
Luxury beliefs are the new VIP card. About the time Grievance Studies started to become popular explanations on elite campuses, summer schools were suddenly set up for the children of elites, so they could get a leg up in the new orthodoxy when they attended the Ivy Leagues. Effectively, Woke became a barrier of social and opportunity exclusion for anyone from the bottom 90% who was Asian or White and male/non-progressive.
There was a book about the SES tendency a while back by Richard Reeves called Dream Hoarders. As an Anglo-American, he can perhaps be forgiven for using the term upper middle class when he meant 10%. He's recently written a book 'Of Boys and Men'. It's basically about blue collar boys and the need to cultivate routes to success which don't involve higher education. He doesn't seem too bad for a Left-leaning liberal. One of these days, I will get around to reading one of his books- but for the moment, my plate is full with sci fi and the books of intellectual giants (and not enough of the latter :)).
Henderson knows his sociology, it seems. One of the first studies that became the discipline (France, 1800s) looked into cutlery and table manners.
More and more refined, detailed and intricate types of cutlery and mannerisms surrounding meals trickled down from royalty to nobility to burghers to peasants to common labourers.
The theory stated that to show (performative as we say today) superiority, you had to both constantly (re)invent new things and manners/-isms as well as dump those that had become too commonplace.
It was much the same with cuisine in Rome: more and more exotic, intricate, complex and complicated meals had to be invented for the Homo Novus/nouveau riche, so that they could show off that their wealth made them equal to nobility.
It is quite probable that what us middle-aged and older experience as a tidal wave of woke to the young looks like something old and tired that is depserately clinging to relevance after having created so much inflation of its own tenets and importance it is in fact crashing rather than cresting.
Henderson is a very interesting individual. He's half-Latino, half-Asian, had an extremely difficult childhood where he was bounced around the foster care system before finally being adopted by the Hendersons. He joined the military and also went to Yale and Oxford, so he has an ususual knowledge of both worlds.
Great comment. There is a whole history to the humble pineapple. When it was expensive, it adorned coats of arms and it is to be found in stonework in English country manors. When it became cheap, it went out of fashion and became a staple for the plebs. Rebranding it as a healthy food has caused a resurgence in its popularity.
Have you seen Niall Ferguson on the 'Treason of the Intellectuals' yet? YouTube only suggested it because I had liked the Roland Fryer interview with Bari Weiss at the same venue.
No, but thanks for the tip! I'm afraid I'm not very "with it" when it comes to listening to pods and such: usually just put one on when doing the dishes.
Much prefer books, then I can scribble up and down the margins while reading.
The Square and The Tower is probably the best book I've read by Ferguson. It explain why things have changed so drastically so quickly- because of the information medium. That being said, there are other factors- especially in terms of concept creep (at the extremes, it's now bullying to have a best friend, because it's excluding others) in education and the therapeutic obsession in parenting.
I use a differently analogy. The one percent using the ‘historically under-represented’ (poc, lgbtq, Muslim or atheist, women) to control the strong, independent, creative, self-sufficient (e.g. the middle class). Make them dependent on the gov’t and even run the institutions. A marriage made in a hell of contradictions. Queers for Palestine, anyone? While entrepreneurs, farmers, stem, small business all must be crushed under the weight of the new social stigma, regulation, taxation, censorship, etc…
It all made no sense until starting to read about psy ops (like this article, and some of Lex's podcasts, and for me an eye opener was the Tucker interview with Bret Weinstein showing how china is jumping in under cover of our societal culture war and mingling with the immigrant caravans as a possible invasion. I'm not sure what steps the average person can take before getting rolled into a feeder class for the elite.
I believe that the medicalization of "trans" children is considered to be the low-hanging fruit so you can still be among the woke and stay on mainstream and social media (youtube) as long as you don't stray away from their agenda on other issues.
My two much younger cousins are a bit like that- they don't agree with medicalizing kids, but agree with everything else. I actually had to explain to them the reason why jazz hands might be 'sensitive' for an incredibly rare few, but was bad for the artist, because it destroyed the feedback process vital for any performer...
Here's a one minute short YouTube video from a Woke Socialist conference. If you notice, as the audience member makes his point about traumatic noises, you will notice several people in the audience using jazz hands:
Henderson was the first writer I found who I could relate to and who helped me to understand the woke movement, the St Floyd and BLM when none of it made sense. But I haven't read anything of his for ages. ---> Jumping in on a random point you make about sci-fi. Have you read Iain banks culture series? I just picked up Surface Detail after listening to Grimes on the Lex podcast. Not sure what to think yet, hoping I won't become a transhumanist ;)
I've read both the Banks sci fi and the contemporary fiction. The Wasp Factory seems strangely prescient these days, doesn't it? It's years since I've read any of the Culture series, though.
One of the pivotal formative moments which turned a fringe 'studies' subject into a mainstream movement was the series of police brutality viral incidents on social media. The problem is it was a false narrative largely created by corporate media- for every Black unarmed man killed by police or Black kids shot with a toy gun, it's possible to find an example of a White man or boy dying in the exact same circumstances. Once one accounts for the underlying crime figures, a Black man is no more likely to be shot by cops than a White man (although research does show Black people are more likely to be recipients of lower levels of use of force, like use of handcuffs or being restrained prone).
There are two likely reasons. One, both parties expect an interaction to go badly and this can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Two, officers likely escalate out of fear of social and career damage- if an interaction is going badly the lower level of force, whilst objectionable from the point of view of justice, is orders of magnitude less serious than a fatal encounter with a Black citizen.
Police brutality should have been seen as an American problem, not a specifically African American problem. The reprehensible thing corporate media did was elevate every Black Police Brutality case to the national stage, whilst White Police Brutality cases remained local news. Nobody outside of Texas has even heard of Tony Timpa, but the harrowing 13 minute video of this mentally unstable young man being slowly suffocated is readily available to watch on YouTube.
The Peacemaker's Code by Deepak Malhotra is a great recent sci fi read. There is one bit I found a little annoying, but generally it's a masterclass on moral constraints in conflict and how the group dynamics of fear can destabilise supposedly rational systems. The book didn't raise the subject, but its insights have a direct impact on problems like the nuclear threat and how we should view theories like MAD and nuclear deterrence as lacking rationality under friction.
I haven’t read either of the books you mentioned so going on the amazon shopping list, thank you! The BLM equivalent is canada’s natives who skilfully play the unearned resource acquisition game and they have some skilled dishonest race grifters just like BLM. Alot of parallels with police interactions and violence. The stats and conclusion of the ‘missing and murdered indigenous women report’ show that the problem is within the community - natives are killing natives, and property crime is rampant anywhere near a reserve. They’ve got autonomy to manage their societal problems, so I hope they can fix themselves but if you read community newspapers or listen to their broadcast station, native journos continue to point at White colonists, showing they are as dishonest as the main stream media.
'They’ve got autonomy to manage their societal problems, so I hope they can fix themselves but if you read community newspapers or listen to their broadcast station, native journos continue to point at White colonists, showing they are as dishonest as the main stream media.'
Ironically, help is not the solution. Agency is the solution. By trying to help, government disempowers people- small is better for a number of reasons. A direct line to the local leader, fostering feedback and reciprocity. The absence of intervening HR bureaucracies, or other types of screeners. Above all, no patronising group of experts espousing theories and failing to obtain basic data on the success or failure of the application of their ideas. The other problem is that there is almost always no 'one-size-fits-all' solution. As an organisation, a structure or corporation, a supermarket fails implicitly through the dehumanising influence of the large scale on human flourishing, but it more than redeems itself by one method alone- through the provision of a plethora of iterative choice... It leaves ordinary people to make decisions.
Personal hang-up: "SS runes"? No such thing. "Runes as used by the SS" was a thing, sadly, and has been exploited by pomos, marxists and such ever since to continue the christians befouling and besmirching of the teutonic/Nordic cultures and their heritage.
That process fits rather well to the idea of psychological war: the soviets and the americans both do this (well, the soviets are past tense) to cement and permanent GBA as an unthinking refelx response. "A rune? Nutzi!" Meanwhile, ignorant "right wing exrremists" (which they aren't, they are psoers through and through) daub themselves with runes as performative ghost dances, thinking "If I look dangerous, I am".
No love, you just look silly. As silly as when an online alt-right praise Fenris or a pinkhaired ptarmigan praise Loke. Culture (kultur) cannot be learned from without, only lived within. When learned from without, that elusive something will always be missing. As with the staff - on its own, it lacks length. It is only long or short relative something else (most Koans are quite trivial and I'll never understand why people think them profound or a sign of intelligent thinking, though they can be very entertaining - 'Ganto's Axe' comes to mind).
Maybe I missed it but to use that title and not a single mention of Blue Öyster Cult's "Veteran of a thousand psychic wars"? (Not "thousand psychic whores" as I misheard it, not alone in that either.)
A thousand psychic whores is however a rather good descriptor of the western surveillance state.
Remember one thing: you don't need to defeat the entire machine; all you have to do is get rid of select individuals and gain control enough to turn the machine to /your/ purpose. 99% of the underlings - the psychic whores - will just keep doing their job.
For someone who worships his home-made idols of "freedoms" or "rights" that may sound horrible. If it does, it just means you don't understand reality and haven't overcome your own resitstance to it. There is The State and it's not going away. It cannot: it is an Apocalyptic supra-human organism made up out of people. We can contrast and compare different states to one another but the state is an evolved entity, not a consciously created one; every little decision made from premises at the time which served to help the state continue and propagate and expand and grow to control its biosphere (rather: psychosphere) was logical and moral when it was made, according to the ones making it.
You must see the Machine, the State, as an organism inside which you live as a part of it, if you are to ever understand it. "The Body Politic" isn't just me being pithy, it's true.
Stepping outside it and denying it as anarcho-sydicalist communes or going Galt (Galt means 'male pig' in swedish) or whatever fantasy one dreams of? Congratulations: you are now as much a challenge to the State as your dandruff is affecting your neurons.
Toxoplasma Gondii, (Ophio)cordyceps, Cymothoa exigua - there are the images for how to suborn, subvert or even take down The State. Not wolves or pine martens or tigers (no, not even in Africa); those all require places to roam beyond the control of their enemies.
How far can you run on a sphere suspended in space?
The state is sort of like a Gundam - just a giant machine with a human inside. It can't be dispensed with, but it can certainly drive its pilots insane.
Also, how did I miss the Blüe Oyster Cult song!? I was even listening to this as I wrote this piece 😅
Well that is indeed high praise! And thank you for it, just what I needed in this dreary drizzle of March 2nd. Weather is unbelievable - 0 to 5 above freezing in the day, just below in the night. I don't think the tow-truck companies have had this much work ever.
We have this thing called "Sports Holiday" in February/March and to not completely swamp ski resorts, it's split up so that southern Sweden has one week, next week middle and coming week the Northland - meaning the weekends are "cabin swapping"-days and the roads are choked with people who are in a rush and not used to driving in snow. ice, sleet, mush and so on.
Anyway.
Yes, the State /is/. Denying that would be like denying the Catholic church while studying Medieval history: it existed, it had agendas, it did things (apologists are welcome to claim it was individuals within the clergy/congregations that are to laud or blame - go for it, and you allow communists and nazis and moslems to do the same re: their faiths) and that is that, a fact to take into account with all the others.
There was a time when it didn't exist, and there may come a time when it no longer exists: it's just that until we can imagine what that would look like, we can't even begin to change in the ways required. Once that idea does exist, it can simply be injected into the State (will be injected, even) and the change will begin.
But look at history: succesful changes to how large groups of humans lived where technology-dependent, organically manifested and the change happened over generations, not election cycles. When Octavian became king of Rome under the moniker "Imperator", the Republic was in effect long dead anyway (any parallels to current day nations I leave to others).
Sometimes, the way forward is backwards and roundabout. But it is never what we /want/ it to be, just because /we/ want it to be a certain way.
The state is almost certainly here to stay. It is by far the oldest institutional form, certainly predating the church.
The question is not so much about getting rid of it, as about putting control of it in the hands of the sanest people we can find, while locking the pathological out. Right now we have the opposite situation.
In reality, the family is the oldest institutional form, hence the vicious, unrelenting war to destroy it. Didn't Putin just spend an unnatural amount of time essentially begging Russians to have children? Only thing is, most normal people don't want their offspring looked upon as future canon fodder. The family is the bulwark against tyranny.
That doesn't fare well for China with their one child policy. Trafficking women into the country to pair with the single male offspring is as foreboding as abandoning their baby girls at birth to die.
Every country has a state and a "deep state", (the system of systems) that attempts, and has been successful in running things without being elected and without our ever knowing their names. These are the dangerous ones. It doesn't matter what country you are talking about (as we learned during the COVID-19 situation) there is a system of bureaucrats and elites who are running things for their own benefit and who consider the rest of us to be lowly serfs to be disposed of at will. The reason they fear what is coming is that the era of the "expert" is coming to an end. The elite medical, legal, security, administrative, university and governmental entities that we once believed in, betrayed us. We can no longer trust them. We need to do our own research and use our own minds. The elite all over the world fear that their world is coming to an end as the people are waking up. Once you wake up - and realize the horror - you can never go back to sleep again.
And to make matters worse, in the anglosphere of the internet when we talk about the State, we subconsciously might skew to thinking and talking about it using the USA as the template, just by dint of the effects pop-cultural imperialism's osmotic effects on our frame of reference, for decades.
Spain is a different beast than is Ireland or Estonia, not just historically and culturally but also when it comes to how its native population interpret that horrible entity, the State.
An example: here, the term "State" originates from meaning "property and assets owned by the Crown". Since you couldn't guarantee a king that was interested and knowledgeable about mining or smelting of iron ore, an administrative apparatus capable of delivering to the Crown what the Crown needed to defend itself and wage war. This gradually came about from the 1550s onwards, until it merges with the move towards democracy during the 1800s.
So in swedish, state simply meant the administrative aspects, not the swedish society or the nation or the people. (As it was in most european cultures I think, though former british colonies may have a different conception of the term depending on culture and how they gained independece.)
From the 1950s the Socialist Democrat party and their press and state media started using nation, society (samhälle) and state (stat) interchangeably; I don't need to tell you why.
From the 1980s, migrant (invandrare, lit. "someone who walks in from outside"), asylum seeker (asylsökande) and refugee (flykting) were jumbled as one of the same.
In many ways, Sweden has served as the test-bed for ideas now being brought into reality. If you can find it, I do recommend "The New Totalitarians" from 1971 by Roland Huntford. While I could pick apart a lot of things he misinterprets, it is a very good look into the concept of soft totalism (not totalitarianism).
Absolutely correct and the ultimate source of my utter disdain for anarchism and lolberts. However, I do share the criticism of the "Red Torries" for the modern state as a machine of law.
We must grope our way back to the state as personal loyalties, oaths given and recieved, between men of substance and quality.
> Remember one thing: you don't need to defeat the entire machine; all you have to do is get rid of select individuals and gain control enough to turn the machine to /your/ purpose. 99% of the underlings - the psychic whores - will just keep doing their job.
I thought the idea was to free people from the evil system, not replace the top with ourselves.
What you do with the Machine if you control it is up to you.
It always is. Call your actions what you will according to any scholastic measure, any canon, any dogma - it is still always up to you what to do with any power you wield.
And any system will be deemed evil by those who oppose it, how could it be otherwise? Would opponents, rebels, upstarts and usurpers say: "We fight against Good!"?
No. Use whatever mythology you want - the unsuccesful rebel is always condemned as Evil.
Wow, phenomenal essay. I first came upon your work a few months ago, and while I haven't read the whole back catalog, I have read many of the essays you referenced here. It's really cool to watch you weave together your various strands of thought - like watching someone painting a verbal masterpiece. Thanks for this and all the other work that contributed to it.
That being said, my main reaction to this read (there will likely be many more) is frustrated sadness. Why is everything the regime does ugly and boring? I was promised bread and circuses, dammit, and all I got was a saltine and the saddest clowns anyone's ever seen.
An essay on war from the Martian posted on March 1. March being the month named in honor of Mars, the god of war. Timing is everything, from comedy to war. Well done.
Most of us are caught up in our private lives and private turmoils that we cannot conceive we are in the midst of new warfare and new battles that technology has evolved into. Frankly, it is unsettling and Congress and permanent government seem more friendly to communist China than to many of their own countrymen. Everything is upside down. We are marching to the ghost in the machine which is oblivion. Technology is a double edged sword. If there is truly no humanity in technology mankind is doomed executing itself. My father knew something about humanity having survived the Turkish genocide of Armenians becoming an urchin after burying his grandmother in the desert by placing her in a ditch because like the other boys that was his job. Before she died she told him to put her in the ditch and escape which he did that night. When he made it to America in 1920 he was so happy and he felt a kinship with people and there was always that human connection based on an unspoken kinship. When technology comes between people or becomes some kind of substitute humanity is diminished and as it diminishes madness begins.
We are in the middle of a war - a 5th generation narrative war but we are winning. In fact, to be blunt - the game is over. The enemy just doesn't know it yet. They will fight to the bitter end, but they are defeated. I see it each day - you just have to know how to see the victories as the edifice of their structure crumbles into a thousand pieces.
Absolutely and utterly astonishing. No, I'm not saying that because I like to blow smoke up anyone's posterior. It's just that you've woven a thought tapestry creating a picture which speaks a thousand words more than you've written. Your description and definition of the parasitic elite and their regime was evisceratingly crystal. But the victory of the right hemisphere was the home run -- or maybe more precisely, the consciousness integrating both hemispheres in realtime course-correcting balance. Or something like that.
I'm going to print this out, wrap it in heavy-duty plastic, and bury it in the back yard. You know, for 'later', if there is one.
I agree. Staggering. Who is this guy? One could argue that his writing is all one needs to know. The name of Mikhail Kalashnikov is known all over the world. But his story is more than the weapon. [Poor analogy, but it’s a cold, drizzly day on an island off the coast of Maine….]
Exactly. Although John Carter is a cool name, as the movie, with some widely recognized initials, we will never know his true identity. Some things are meant that way. I think if you look back through history, it's the nameless ones who've made the greatest impact. But then, history is written (and re-written) by the ruling class.
I must think on these things. I must read this again. I must consider going cold turkey on xitter.
Mandatory for our guys. Read it now.
Let me offer a slight challenge. I am today less concerned about Truth than I am Beauty. It is the great uglification that offends me the most. Would not a program of Kalologue be stronger medicine than Atheiologue?
I should perhaps have leaned harder into Beauty. It is indeed of central, deep, crucial importance. It is not at all accidental that the same forces that drain our world of Truth, also strip it of Beauty.
Kalologue is an interesting formulation ... yet is Beauty properly something known though logos? Or perhaps, better appreciated via mythos?
I've felt for a long time - maybe because I've been in the creative arts my whole life - that beauty was our prime social currency. It almost got destroyed in 2020 but I think it's making a comeback. We need it. Without it, we become mere machines - which is exactly why the assassination attempt.
We're at a nadir of beauty - architecture, fashion, design, everything is stark and unappealing. I suspect you're right - the culture is going to start pushing hard in the other direction.
Beauty was killed by the cult of novelty. The cult of novelty stems from universities morphing from primarily being teaching institutions to institutions of research. To teach at a university these days you need a PhD. To get a PhD one must produce something significantly new.
The problem is: some aspects of beauty are kind of timeless.
Pedagogy itself is fairly timeless. We've known the best ways to teach various subjects for a very long time. There's not much else to say. Yet education PhDs must be "scientists", they must find something "new". Which invariably, for a perfected subject, means "wrong". They then go on to work at education ministries, where they busy themselves modifying curricula, standards, etc., which teachers are then forced to follow. When it would almost certainly be far better to just let the teachers teach.
My husband and I moved to Rome, (he is Italian by ancestry) for the opportunity to drink it in every day, while we can. The world we came from, (Western U.S.) becomes uglier every day. (We were aghast at the new fountain in Austria compared to the most insignificant fountain in Rome...WTF are they thinking???!!!) We lived in a very exclusive ZIP code in AZ; billionaires were erecting giant mansions on acres of land. Most looked like prisons. We hated them. Walking the trails and shaking our heads; gray, cement, square abodes of no warmth or color. So damn ugly. But I made the comment then and I think it's even more true now; the ugliness is a reflection of what is in the human heart. Reviving the love of actual beauty is a humongous task. We can say we have allowed the 'modern' arts to kill it, but the rapid downfall is clearly related to the rejection of Jesus. I am a Christian and have always viewed what is happening from 30,000 feet up. It is all inevitable in a world ruled by an Enemy who wants to "steal, kill and destroy", and that "is the Father of lies". Even more interesting, Jesus said "I am the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life. NO ONE comes to the Father except by me". It is so clear that only He can save us from what is coming. Time for people to stop rejecting, in their pride, the only chance they have at redemption, in this life and the next. If you have eyes that see, it is obvious.
BEAUTY, yes, you're talking my language, thank you. I just attempted to write a Substack about it and found it an incredibly difficult subject. I also feel that not many people care about it the way I have always done, so thank you!
Beauty and truth are coming from the same (divine) source. As our overlords are frantically trying to cut of mankind from its natural (universal, divine...choose your word) origins, they do this by inverting the principles of truth and beauty into their contraries.
Tremendous essay. Atheiologue is a valuable word, going to follow your links re: right v left hemispheres because I had had a similar but less well-considered idea along similar lines. V good stuff.
Thank you. Huge fan of your work too. Billionaire Psycho shared Men of Quality recently, and I subscribed just before you published Memphis. Hope you don't make us wait a year for your next piece!
Outstanding. The Regime is stumbling about, looking to start a fight with enemies foreign or domestic, whose ranks are growing with each outrage. Blue satrapies are furiously passing laws making illegal the possession of semiautomatic rifles. The rulers of Charles Haywood's 'Brawndo Tyranny' fear getting Ceasescu'ed when things fall apart. No Israelis will be dancing when that happens, but practically everyone else in the world will go for a twirl on the dance floor when this Regime collapses.
Their sheer stupidity is almost offensive, isn't it? It's a collection of unimpressive morons in possession of history's most powerful technologies. The worst part about all of this is the embarrassment of being ruled by these people.
Yes, unless the worst part is that these people actually manage to convert our not-so-long-ago liberal democracies into what Eugyppius calls pseudodemocracies. Manage to become coup-enforcing despotism Capos. His recent posts on German "politics" are pretty chilling.
In the long term we can expect to see a renewed interest in organic cognitive function/development as an alternative to the mechanistic approach. The emergent counter-elite will develop paedagogies and self-improvement techniques, leaving AI and virtual reality for the drones.
As speciation sets in we will see a bifurcation of the population between those shaped wholly by the regime's culture and those shaped by underground, counter-cultural, neo-Rosicurian currents. Can't help but think of mentats and the Bene Gesserit.
You beat me to it with the Dune reference. Was going to say, I don't think we'll have to wait that long - the popularity of Dune suggests a hunger for precisely this kind of organic development.
Your analysis reminds me of a line from the movie The Martian: “Every day will be slightly darker than the last, too subtle to notice.” The Leviathan wants its aspirations to be discreet, yet seem inexorable.
An unmentioned theme underpinning your narrative is the role of friction as a braking system on those aspirations. It’s the Leviathan’s most vexing nemesis — the resistive medium that prevents it from achieving its absolute nature. The Leviathan presents itself as the ideal sovereign — infallible, omnipotent, omniscient. But it is subject, as Clausewitz said, to the “impediments to smooth action produced by thousands of individuals” that populate its ranks…to the “numerous chance events which touch everything…” to the “numerous difficulties that inhibit accurate execution of the precise plans that theory tends to formulate.” The more complex its machinations, the denser the friction. The more lubricants (money, venal offices, managerial mechanics) it applies, the more it finds itself intensifying the effects of friction. It aspires to produce Emerald City — but delivers Kensington, Philadelphia. It aspires to wield AI for ultimate control — and creates Gemini. It foregoes merit in hiring university Presidents — and selects serial plagiarists.
Like the wizard in Oz, the Leviathan alternatively costumes itself as a scary giant, a seductive beauty, a terrifying beast, or a cleansing fire. But it is, in fact, an organized anarchy bloated with humbuggery. It is tuned to routinized responses to predictable behavior, so when it faces unfamiliar and unexpected contingencies (civil disobedience by truckers and farmers, flooding of prompts, poisoning of data, mass mockery) friction takes the wheel.
In “War of the Flea,” Robert Taber spoke of the advantages of irregular forces — fleas — over the dog’s (a military opponent’s) disadvantages: “too much to defend, too small, ubiquitous and agile an enemy to come to grips with.” Friction can exhaust even the most formidable dog. Friction by itself won’t rescue a subject population, but it is a stalwart, reliable and exploitable ally. As the Dalai Lama said, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
Fantastic comment. Social friction is a powerful weapon; it's largely what brought down the COVID regime. Then of course there's the Regime's tendency towards narcissistic self-deception, towards wishful thinking. It's important to remember that the future is never as sparkling and glorious, or as nightmarish and awful, as one imagines. When it arrives it is always much more banal than expected, and we should temper our hopes and fears accordingly.
It’s important to remember that our luciferian overlords also employ the same fleas and mosquitoes for their purposes. These are your neighbors, local workers, police, teachers, BLM and Troon cultists.
They sit behind their gated walls with private and public security laughing at our silly protests. They’ll harass the protestors, jail them, de-bank them and wait it out. They’re not experiencing any hardships resultant of the protests.
What a marvellous, mind-blowing essay, John. Much food for thought; I’ll be mulling over this for an age (in the nicest possible way). I was particularly struck by the analogy of the Regime’s similarity to the left brain’s functionality & its blindness to the right brain. This rings true & gives us hope when we night feel overwhelmed by the ‘woke’ hive mind that denies reality & insists their chimera is the truth. Can’t say more yet as I have a deal to think about. Many thanks for a wonderful read.
The open ones inconvenient or something? I thought newfangled tech like that was more civilized than just copy-pasting the address bar, if people still know what that is.
I still remember when they taught computer and typing classes because I was in them. They had a textbook about the Internet too. I used the 3d printed save icon and heard the scream of dial-up, both of which I don't miss but still like.
I do not often express personal experiences on substack articles, however, this brilliant essay merits that expression for its aptness.
Approximately 20 years ago, I was startled out of a dream (in which I believed myself to be awake) by a physical, as well as spiritual experience, of a veil or membrane being ripped away from between the two halves of my brain. I was transported to a Universe of such richness and wonder, a realm of infinite knowing that cannot be explained in words.
Perhaps John Keats' poem Ode on a Grecian Urn best describes it:
An encounter that continues. A few years prior to this experience I was vouchsafed a numinous vision of the underlying Field of Consciousness that connects everything. There are no adequate words to describe this Beauty, but it transforms one's life forever.
They are the parasitical plutocrats of our time. They wish to feast on our "flesh".
"When you see that in order to produce you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice-You may know that your society is doomed." ~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
> We need only loosen the controls, and allow water to find its own level.
And now, for the first time in my entire fucking life, I understand why Liberalism was invented. Recall: it's progenitors were revolting against feudalism. Feudalism couldn't have been much more different that what's described in this essay. And now, I do actually see how and in what way Liberalism isn't only true, but obviously so.
It's right to stress the importance of Occupy Wall Street, but in terms of defining a catalytic event which tipped the culture into its current zeitgeist, It would have to be Nick Hanauer's August 2014 TED Talk 'Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming'. Don't get me wrong- Ross Douthat coined the phrase 'Woke Capitalism' in 2015, and yes, the deeply flawed availability heuristic of incredibly rare police brutality cases against unarmed Black men certainly played a role in allowing social media to remove the educational partitions which had rightly kept the Grievance Studies a trendy, yet lunatic fringe set of fields, within Academia- serving as a means of exposition to a phenomenon entirely manufactured by corporate media wishing to impose narratives which were entirely fictional as means of grabbing attention in a fiercely competive market. Black kids shot with toy guns with elevated to the national news. White kids shot in the exact same circumstances barely made the local news. Everybody knows the name of George Floyd, but few know of Tony Timpa- even though his YouTube video is a harrowing 13 minutes long, as opposed to St. George's 8 minutes. Same dog, old trick- the same methods once use to vilify smear and defame an entire generation of young Black men were now being used to the same effect on White men in blue uniforms. Just desserts, some might say, until one considers that it was Left-leaning liberal politicians and lawyers who shafted young Black Male America- not the police officers compelled by policy to follow their draconian legal mandates.
The 'Pitchforks' TED Talk frightened and galvanized establishment, institutional and corporate America in a way that few other purely memetic events have. It's why the 'Pitchforks' TED Talk immediately joined a very short list of popular TED Talks by credible speakers which have ever been banned. Rupert Sheldrake was another (although admittedly *some* of his ideas are pretty fringe). Coleman Hughes would likely also have joined the honour roll, for his talk on the importance of colour-blindness, had TED not long since learned the attention-drawing lessons of outright bans.
'Pitchforks' served a purpose in terms of resourcing and amplification. Suddenly what had been a cynical exercise in PR, a means of liability shielding and corporate branding gained the impetus of necessity, as a means to divert a looming existential crisis. To the surface level viewer, fed on the narrative of private vs. public antagonism and Left-liberal disdain for capitalism, this might seem implausible- but one has to remember that as a class, they all went to the same elite schools. They are friends and intimate acquaintances who protect each others backs. We saw the same thing with the GameStop Revolution, as Left corporate media immediately stood against the movement, going so far as to circulate a scam silver short squeeze as a means of a particular hedge fund to recoup their billion dollar losses, before finally releasing the mass mood was against them, even amongst their own target demo, and quickly changing their tune.
What they never imagined is that their cynical Divide et Impera play to maintain the neo-feudal status quo of the blue collar class, would ultimately backfire and derange an entire generation of the college educated, barring a small minority of dissenters and a larger core of cowards fearful for their jobs and pensions. They gravely underestimated the power of baseless accusation-many a CEO came to fear and dread the authority of their HR director.
They didn't understand the nature of the beast they were unleashing. History could have taught them- the Nazis, Robespierre, the Soviet origins of the word PC, the Cultural Revolution. Weaponizing resentment along arbitrary group lines, unless conceived as an appeal to justice and common humanity, is always a terrible idea. But unity wasn't their aim- instead it was disunity. They wanted to disrupt a growing class interest between blue collar Whites, Blacks and Hispanics- indeed, all the demographics increasingly intent upon voting for Trump later this year...
Excellent comment. Indeed, I strongly suspect the Woke was deployed at a means of dividing the 99%.
Here's a good analogy- the VIP lounge of a nightclub. The 1% (or 0.1%) own the club. The 9% are allowed access to the VIP lounge, provided they pay lip service to woke orthodoxies (if they are really good little boys and girls, they get comped drinks or the occasional Happy Hour). Woke is an attempt to tokenise and recruit the children of the most successful from every ethnicity, whilst determinedly keeping the meritocratically superior children of the riffraff out in the cold. They don't give a shit about the other 95% to 98% of African Americans or Hispanics. Only 3% of the Woke are Black. Regurgitation of the political and cultural creed is compulsory. Big names like Charlemagne can get away with bemoaning the fact that most people weren't consulted about the medicalisation of 'trans' kids- but for anyone else, deviation from the script on any issue is a punishable offence. Black men cannot question patriarchy, even though by any measure, they are worse off than Black women. Lesbians cannot question whether a trans woman with a penis is compatible with their *sexual* preferences. Believe it or not, there really are studies out there, extremely puzzled why, of those willing to be trans inclusive in their dating, 50% of lesbians are willing to date trans men and 50% are willing to date trans women- without asking the question does the trans lesbian have a penis...
Have you read Rob Henderson's Luxury Beliefs? Because the children of the plebs had started wearing Timberlands, Burberry, and had finally clocked the trick about wearing expensive designer goods with no labels (which only people from the same class could recognise), the new luxury good to define elite status became luxury beliefs- which cost cultural and economic elites nothing, but cost anyone living in the real world a great deal.
Luxury beliefs are the new VIP card. About the time Grievance Studies started to become popular explanations on elite campuses, summer schools were suddenly set up for the children of elites, so they could get a leg up in the new orthodoxy when they attended the Ivy Leagues. Effectively, Woke became a barrier of social and opportunity exclusion for anyone from the bottom 90% who was Asian or White and male/non-progressive.
There was a book about the SES tendency a while back by Richard Reeves called Dream Hoarders. As an Anglo-American, he can perhaps be forgiven for using the term upper middle class when he meant 10%. He's recently written a book 'Of Boys and Men'. It's basically about blue collar boys and the need to cultivate routes to success which don't involve higher education. He doesn't seem too bad for a Left-leaning liberal. One of these days, I will get around to reading one of his books- but for the moment, my plate is full with sci fi and the books of intellectual giants (and not enough of the latter :)).
Yes, I've come across Henderson's luxury beliefs before. He's definitely onto something. Lorenzo Warby makes extensive use of that concept.
Henderson knows his sociology, it seems. One of the first studies that became the discipline (France, 1800s) looked into cutlery and table manners.
More and more refined, detailed and intricate types of cutlery and mannerisms surrounding meals trickled down from royalty to nobility to burghers to peasants to common labourers.
The theory stated that to show (performative as we say today) superiority, you had to both constantly (re)invent new things and manners/-isms as well as dump those that had become too commonplace.
It was much the same with cuisine in Rome: more and more exotic, intricate, complex and complicated meals had to be invented for the Homo Novus/nouveau riche, so that they could show off that their wealth made them equal to nobility.
It is quite probable that what us middle-aged and older experience as a tidal wave of woke to the young looks like something old and tired that is depserately clinging to relevance after having created so much inflation of its own tenets and importance it is in fact crashing rather than cresting.
Henderson is a very interesting individual. He's half-Latino, half-Asian, had an extremely difficult childhood where he was bounced around the foster care system before finally being adopted by the Hendersons. He joined the military and also went to Yale and Oxford, so he has an ususual knowledge of both worlds.
Great comment. There is a whole history to the humble pineapple. When it was expensive, it adorned coats of arms and it is to be found in stonework in English country manors. When it became cheap, it went out of fashion and became a staple for the plebs. Rebranding it as a healthy food has caused a resurgence in its popularity.
Have you seen Niall Ferguson on the 'Treason of the Intellectuals' yet? YouTube only suggested it because I had liked the Roland Fryer interview with Bari Weiss at the same venue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5QID4HVUTY&t=669s
No, but thanks for the tip! I'm afraid I'm not very "with it" when it comes to listening to pods and such: usually just put one on when doing the dishes.
Much prefer books, then I can scribble up and down the margins while reading.
The Square and The Tower is probably the best book I've read by Ferguson. It explain why things have changed so drastically so quickly- because of the information medium. That being said, there are other factors- especially in terms of concept creep (at the extremes, it's now bullying to have a best friend, because it's excluding others) in education and the therapeutic obsession in parenting.
I hope you use pencil!
I use a differently analogy. The one percent using the ‘historically under-represented’ (poc, lgbtq, Muslim or atheist, women) to control the strong, independent, creative, self-sufficient (e.g. the middle class). Make them dependent on the gov’t and even run the institutions. A marriage made in a hell of contradictions. Queers for Palestine, anyone? While entrepreneurs, farmers, stem, small business all must be crushed under the weight of the new social stigma, regulation, taxation, censorship, etc…
It all made no sense until starting to read about psy ops (like this article, and some of Lex's podcasts, and for me an eye opener was the Tucker interview with Bret Weinstein showing how china is jumping in under cover of our societal culture war and mingling with the immigrant caravans as a possible invasion. I'm not sure what steps the average person can take before getting rolled into a feeder class for the elite.
I believe that the medicalization of "trans" children is considered to be the low-hanging fruit so you can still be among the woke and stay on mainstream and social media (youtube) as long as you don't stray away from their agenda on other issues.
My two much younger cousins are a bit like that- they don't agree with medicalizing kids, but agree with everything else. I actually had to explain to them the reason why jazz hands might be 'sensitive' for an incredibly rare few, but was bad for the artist, because it destroyed the feedback process vital for any performer...
I am confused what you mean here??? I thought jazz hands was always a joke.
It's all too real.
Unfortunately, the jazz hands thing is real- here is an article about an Oxford student move to ban clapping:
https://nypost.com/2019/10/25/oxford-bans-clapping-to-avoid-upsetting-students/
Here's a one minute short YouTube video from a Woke Socialist conference. If you notice, as the audience member makes his point about traumatic noises, you will notice several people in the audience using jazz hands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moWe3rk7LzQ
Henderson was the first writer I found who I could relate to and who helped me to understand the woke movement, the St Floyd and BLM when none of it made sense. But I haven't read anything of his for ages. ---> Jumping in on a random point you make about sci-fi. Have you read Iain banks culture series? I just picked up Surface Detail after listening to Grimes on the Lex podcast. Not sure what to think yet, hoping I won't become a transhumanist ;)
I've read both the Banks sci fi and the contemporary fiction. The Wasp Factory seems strangely prescient these days, doesn't it? It's years since I've read any of the Culture series, though.
One of the pivotal formative moments which turned a fringe 'studies' subject into a mainstream movement was the series of police brutality viral incidents on social media. The problem is it was a false narrative largely created by corporate media- for every Black unarmed man killed by police or Black kids shot with a toy gun, it's possible to find an example of a White man or boy dying in the exact same circumstances. Once one accounts for the underlying crime figures, a Black man is no more likely to be shot by cops than a White man (although research does show Black people are more likely to be recipients of lower levels of use of force, like use of handcuffs or being restrained prone).
There are two likely reasons. One, both parties expect an interaction to go badly and this can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Two, officers likely escalate out of fear of social and career damage- if an interaction is going badly the lower level of force, whilst objectionable from the point of view of justice, is orders of magnitude less serious than a fatal encounter with a Black citizen.
Police brutality should have been seen as an American problem, not a specifically African American problem. The reprehensible thing corporate media did was elevate every Black Police Brutality case to the national stage, whilst White Police Brutality cases remained local news. Nobody outside of Texas has even heard of Tony Timpa, but the harrowing 13 minute video of this mentally unstable young man being slowly suffocated is readily available to watch on YouTube.
The Peacemaker's Code by Deepak Malhotra is a great recent sci fi read. There is one bit I found a little annoying, but generally it's a masterclass on moral constraints in conflict and how the group dynamics of fear can destabilise supposedly rational systems. The book didn't raise the subject, but its insights have a direct impact on problems like the nuclear threat and how we should view theories like MAD and nuclear deterrence as lacking rationality under friction.
I haven’t read either of the books you mentioned so going on the amazon shopping list, thank you! The BLM equivalent is canada’s natives who skilfully play the unearned resource acquisition game and they have some skilled dishonest race grifters just like BLM. Alot of parallels with police interactions and violence. The stats and conclusion of the ‘missing and murdered indigenous women report’ show that the problem is within the community - natives are killing natives, and property crime is rampant anywhere near a reserve. They’ve got autonomy to manage their societal problems, so I hope they can fix themselves but if you read community newspapers or listen to their broadcast station, native journos continue to point at White colonists, showing they are as dishonest as the main stream media.
'They’ve got autonomy to manage their societal problems, so I hope they can fix themselves but if you read community newspapers or listen to their broadcast station, native journos continue to point at White colonists, showing they are as dishonest as the main stream media.'
Ironically, help is not the solution. Agency is the solution. By trying to help, government disempowers people- small is better for a number of reasons. A direct line to the local leader, fostering feedback and reciprocity. The absence of intervening HR bureaucracies, or other types of screeners. Above all, no patronising group of experts espousing theories and failing to obtain basic data on the success or failure of the application of their ideas. The other problem is that there is almost always no 'one-size-fits-all' solution. As an organisation, a structure or corporation, a supermarket fails implicitly through the dehumanising influence of the large scale on human flourishing, but it more than redeems itself by one method alone- through the provision of a plethora of iterative choice... It leaves ordinary people to make decisions.
I watched the TED talk thank you for pointing that out. Go Trump.
The ted talk seems to be freely available now.
Yep. I think they realised it drew even more attention, rather belatedly.
Phew, you said a mouthful and a half there.
Personal hang-up: "SS runes"? No such thing. "Runes as used by the SS" was a thing, sadly, and has been exploited by pomos, marxists and such ever since to continue the christians befouling and besmirching of the teutonic/Nordic cultures and their heritage.
That process fits rather well to the idea of psychological war: the soviets and the americans both do this (well, the soviets are past tense) to cement and permanent GBA as an unthinking refelx response. "A rune? Nutzi!" Meanwhile, ignorant "right wing exrremists" (which they aren't, they are psoers through and through) daub themselves with runes as performative ghost dances, thinking "If I look dangerous, I am".
No love, you just look silly. As silly as when an online alt-right praise Fenris or a pinkhaired ptarmigan praise Loke. Culture (kultur) cannot be learned from without, only lived within. When learned from without, that elusive something will always be missing. As with the staff - on its own, it lacks length. It is only long or short relative something else (most Koans are quite trivial and I'll never understand why people think them profound or a sign of intelligent thinking, though they can be very entertaining - 'Ganto's Axe' comes to mind).
Maybe I missed it but to use that title and not a single mention of Blue Öyster Cult's "Veteran of a thousand psychic wars"? (Not "thousand psychic whores" as I misheard it, not alone in that either.)
A thousand psychic whores is however a rather good descriptor of the western surveillance state.
Remember one thing: you don't need to defeat the entire machine; all you have to do is get rid of select individuals and gain control enough to turn the machine to /your/ purpose. 99% of the underlings - the psychic whores - will just keep doing their job.
For someone who worships his home-made idols of "freedoms" or "rights" that may sound horrible. If it does, it just means you don't understand reality and haven't overcome your own resitstance to it. There is The State and it's not going away. It cannot: it is an Apocalyptic supra-human organism made up out of people. We can contrast and compare different states to one another but the state is an evolved entity, not a consciously created one; every little decision made from premises at the time which served to help the state continue and propagate and expand and grow to control its biosphere (rather: psychosphere) was logical and moral when it was made, according to the ones making it.
You must see the Machine, the State, as an organism inside which you live as a part of it, if you are to ever understand it. "The Body Politic" isn't just me being pithy, it's true.
Stepping outside it and denying it as anarcho-sydicalist communes or going Galt (Galt means 'male pig' in swedish) or whatever fantasy one dreams of? Congratulations: you are now as much a challenge to the State as your dandruff is affecting your neurons.
Toxoplasma Gondii, (Ophio)cordyceps, Cymothoa exigua - there are the images for how to suborn, subvert or even take down The State. Not wolves or pine martens or tigers (no, not even in Africa); those all require places to roam beyond the control of their enemies.
How far can you run on a sphere suspended in space?
You always write such pinnable comments.
The state is sort of like a Gundam - just a giant machine with a human inside. It can't be dispensed with, but it can certainly drive its pilots insane.
Also, how did I miss the Blüe Oyster Cult song!? I was even listening to this as I wrote this piece 😅
Well that is indeed high praise! And thank you for it, just what I needed in this dreary drizzle of March 2nd. Weather is unbelievable - 0 to 5 above freezing in the day, just below in the night. I don't think the tow-truck companies have had this much work ever.
We have this thing called "Sports Holiday" in February/March and to not completely swamp ski resorts, it's split up so that southern Sweden has one week, next week middle and coming week the Northland - meaning the weekends are "cabin swapping"-days and the roads are choked with people who are in a rush and not used to driving in snow. ice, sleet, mush and so on.
Anyway.
Yes, the State /is/. Denying that would be like denying the Catholic church while studying Medieval history: it existed, it had agendas, it did things (apologists are welcome to claim it was individuals within the clergy/congregations that are to laud or blame - go for it, and you allow communists and nazis and moslems to do the same re: their faiths) and that is that, a fact to take into account with all the others.
There was a time when it didn't exist, and there may come a time when it no longer exists: it's just that until we can imagine what that would look like, we can't even begin to change in the ways required. Once that idea does exist, it can simply be injected into the State (will be injected, even) and the change will begin.
But look at history: succesful changes to how large groups of humans lived where technology-dependent, organically manifested and the change happened over generations, not election cycles. When Octavian became king of Rome under the moniker "Imperator", the Republic was in effect long dead anyway (any parallels to current day nations I leave to others).
Sometimes, the way forward is backwards and roundabout. But it is never what we /want/ it to be, just because /we/ want it to be a certain way.
The state is almost certainly here to stay. It is by far the oldest institutional form, certainly predating the church.
The question is not so much about getting rid of it, as about putting control of it in the hands of the sanest people we can find, while locking the pathological out. Right now we have the opposite situation.
In reality, the family is the oldest institutional form, hence the vicious, unrelenting war to destroy it. Didn't Putin just spend an unnatural amount of time essentially begging Russians to have children? Only thing is, most normal people don't want their offspring looked upon as future canon fodder. The family is the bulwark against tyranny.
Yes! Family comes first.
Familj, fränder, folk, fosterland.
The translation "limps" a bit:
Family, kin, people, father-/motherland.
From family all the other grew, and when family is destroyed, so are they.
That doesn't fare well for China with their one child policy. Trafficking women into the country to pair with the single male offspring is as foreboding as abandoning their baby girls at birth to die.
Every country has a state and a "deep state", (the system of systems) that attempts, and has been successful in running things without being elected and without our ever knowing their names. These are the dangerous ones. It doesn't matter what country you are talking about (as we learned during the COVID-19 situation) there is a system of bureaucrats and elites who are running things for their own benefit and who consider the rest of us to be lowly serfs to be disposed of at will. The reason they fear what is coming is that the era of the "expert" is coming to an end. The elite medical, legal, security, administrative, university and governmental entities that we once believed in, betrayed us. We can no longer trust them. We need to do our own research and use our own minds. The elite all over the world fear that their world is coming to an end as the people are waking up. Once you wake up - and realize the horror - you can never go back to sleep again.
And to make matters worse, in the anglosphere of the internet when we talk about the State, we subconsciously might skew to thinking and talking about it using the USA as the template, just by dint of the effects pop-cultural imperialism's osmotic effects on our frame of reference, for decades.
Spain is a different beast than is Ireland or Estonia, not just historically and culturally but also when it comes to how its native population interpret that horrible entity, the State.
We absolutely need to start thinking of the state in broader terms than alphabet agencies and representative democracy.
Yes.
An example: here, the term "State" originates from meaning "property and assets owned by the Crown". Since you couldn't guarantee a king that was interested and knowledgeable about mining or smelting of iron ore, an administrative apparatus capable of delivering to the Crown what the Crown needed to defend itself and wage war. This gradually came about from the 1550s onwards, until it merges with the move towards democracy during the 1800s.
So in swedish, state simply meant the administrative aspects, not the swedish society or the nation or the people. (As it was in most european cultures I think, though former british colonies may have a different conception of the term depending on culture and how they gained independece.)
From the 1950s the Socialist Democrat party and their press and state media started using nation, society (samhälle) and state (stat) interchangeably; I don't need to tell you why.
From the 1980s, migrant (invandrare, lit. "someone who walks in from outside"), asylum seeker (asylsökande) and refugee (flykting) were jumbled as one of the same.
In many ways, Sweden has served as the test-bed for ideas now being brought into reality. If you can find it, I do recommend "The New Totalitarians" from 1971 by Roland Huntford. While I could pick apart a lot of things he misinterprets, it is a very good look into the concept of soft totalism (not totalitarianism).
Absolutely correct and the ultimate source of my utter disdain for anarchism and lolberts. However, I do share the criticism of the "Red Torries" for the modern state as a machine of law.
We must grope our way back to the state as personal loyalties, oaths given and recieved, between men of substance and quality.
Exactly this.
haha, bulls-eye
> Remember one thing: you don't need to defeat the entire machine; all you have to do is get rid of select individuals and gain control enough to turn the machine to /your/ purpose. 99% of the underlings - the psychic whores - will just keep doing their job.
I thought the idea was to free people from the evil system, not replace the top with ourselves.
What you do with the Machine if you control it is up to you.
It always is. Call your actions what you will according to any scholastic measure, any canon, any dogma - it is still always up to you what to do with any power you wield.
And any system will be deemed evil by those who oppose it, how could it be otherwise? Would opponents, rebels, upstarts and usurpers say: "We fight against Good!"?
No. Use whatever mythology you want - the unsuccesful rebel is always condemned as Evil.
Wow, phenomenal essay. I first came upon your work a few months ago, and while I haven't read the whole back catalog, I have read many of the essays you referenced here. It's really cool to watch you weave together your various strands of thought - like watching someone painting a verbal masterpiece. Thanks for this and all the other work that contributed to it.
That being said, my main reaction to this read (there will likely be many more) is frustrated sadness. Why is everything the regime does ugly and boring? I was promised bread and circuses, dammit, and all I got was a saltine and the saddest clowns anyone's ever seen.
It's awful, I agree. This wouldn't be so bad if they were just good at their jobs. Yet they can't even be compelling villains.
An essay on war from the Martian posted on March 1. March being the month named in honor of Mars, the god of war. Timing is everything, from comedy to war. Well done.
Totally intentional 👀
Most of us are caught up in our private lives and private turmoils that we cannot conceive we are in the midst of new warfare and new battles that technology has evolved into. Frankly, it is unsettling and Congress and permanent government seem more friendly to communist China than to many of their own countrymen. Everything is upside down. We are marching to the ghost in the machine which is oblivion. Technology is a double edged sword. If there is truly no humanity in technology mankind is doomed executing itself. My father knew something about humanity having survived the Turkish genocide of Armenians becoming an urchin after burying his grandmother in the desert by placing her in a ditch because like the other boys that was his job. Before she died she told him to put her in the ditch and escape which he did that night. When he made it to America in 1920 he was so happy and he felt a kinship with people and there was always that human connection based on an unspoken kinship. When technology comes between people or becomes some kind of substitute humanity is diminished and as it diminishes madness begins.
We are in the middle of a war - a 5th generation narrative war but we are winning. In fact, to be blunt - the game is over. The enemy just doesn't know it yet. They will fight to the bitter end, but they are defeated. I see it each day - you just have to know how to see the victories as the edifice of their structure crumbles into a thousand pieces.
Absolutely and utterly astonishing. No, I'm not saying that because I like to blow smoke up anyone's posterior. It's just that you've woven a thought tapestry creating a picture which speaks a thousand words more than you've written. Your description and definition of the parasitic elite and their regime was evisceratingly crystal. But the victory of the right hemisphere was the home run -- or maybe more precisely, the consciousness integrating both hemispheres in realtime course-correcting balance. Or something like that.
I'm going to print this out, wrap it in heavy-duty plastic, and bury it in the back yard. You know, for 'later', if there is one.
Of course there's a later - worlds end, but the world doesn't.
Better yet, bury it in the mind of a young man.
I agree. Staggering. Who is this guy? One could argue that his writing is all one needs to know. The name of Mikhail Kalashnikov is known all over the world. But his story is more than the weapon. [Poor analogy, but it’s a cold, drizzly day on an island off the coast of Maine….]
Exactly. Although John Carter is a cool name, as the movie, with some widely recognized initials, we will never know his true identity. Some things are meant that way. I think if you look back through history, it's the nameless ones who've made the greatest impact. But then, history is written (and re-written) by the ruling class.
Tremendous. Inspirational. Challenging. Original.
I must think on these things. I must read this again. I must consider going cold turkey on xitter.
Mandatory for our guys. Read it now.
Let me offer a slight challenge. I am today less concerned about Truth than I am Beauty. It is the great uglification that offends me the most. Would not a program of Kalologue be stronger medicine than Atheiologue?
I should perhaps have leaned harder into Beauty. It is indeed of central, deep, crucial importance. It is not at all accidental that the same forces that drain our world of Truth, also strip it of Beauty.
Kalologue is an interesting formulation ... yet is Beauty properly something known though logos? Or perhaps, better appreciated via mythos?
I've felt for a long time - maybe because I've been in the creative arts my whole life - that beauty was our prime social currency. It almost got destroyed in 2020 but I think it's making a comeback. We need it. Without it, we become mere machines - which is exactly why the assassination attempt.
We're at a nadir of beauty - architecture, fashion, design, everything is stark and unappealing. I suspect you're right - the culture is going to start pushing hard in the other direction.
And faith. There is a revival coming. I can feel the warm winds blowing.
Yes, a return to faith is vital. What greater truth is there? We can rest in those warm winds. The spiritual battle is being fought. God will win.
Amen.
I've noticed that studying Greek and Roman Stoicism has become more popular lately. That's probably part of the same revival.
Are you familiar with Sir Roger Scruton? He was the greatest scholar on the subject of beauty in our lifetimes.
Yes, and he absolutely was.
Beauty was killed by the cult of novelty. The cult of novelty stems from universities morphing from primarily being teaching institutions to institutions of research. To teach at a university these days you need a PhD. To get a PhD one must produce something significantly new.
The problem is: some aspects of beauty are kind of timeless.
There's a lot of truth to this.
Pedagogy itself is fairly timeless. We've known the best ways to teach various subjects for a very long time. There's not much else to say. Yet education PhDs must be "scientists", they must find something "new". Which invariably, for a perfected subject, means "wrong". They then go on to work at education ministries, where they busy themselves modifying curricula, standards, etc., which teachers are then forced to follow. When it would almost certainly be far better to just let the teachers teach.
How many times must we uninvent phonics?
As many times as we uninvent the major scale.
Can there be Beauty without Truth? Isn't Beauty merely an expression of Truth?
My husband and I moved to Rome, (he is Italian by ancestry) for the opportunity to drink it in every day, while we can. The world we came from, (Western U.S.) becomes uglier every day. (We were aghast at the new fountain in Austria compared to the most insignificant fountain in Rome...WTF are they thinking???!!!) We lived in a very exclusive ZIP code in AZ; billionaires were erecting giant mansions on acres of land. Most looked like prisons. We hated them. Walking the trails and shaking our heads; gray, cement, square abodes of no warmth or color. So damn ugly. But I made the comment then and I think it's even more true now; the ugliness is a reflection of what is in the human heart. Reviving the love of actual beauty is a humongous task. We can say we have allowed the 'modern' arts to kill it, but the rapid downfall is clearly related to the rejection of Jesus. I am a Christian and have always viewed what is happening from 30,000 feet up. It is all inevitable in a world ruled by an Enemy who wants to "steal, kill and destroy", and that "is the Father of lies". Even more interesting, Jesus said "I am the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life. NO ONE comes to the Father except by me". It is so clear that only He can save us from what is coming. Time for people to stop rejecting, in their pride, the only chance they have at redemption, in this life and the next. If you have eyes that see, it is obvious.
BEAUTY, yes, you're talking my language, thank you. I just attempted to write a Substack about it and found it an incredibly difficult subject. I also feel that not many people care about it the way I have always done, so thank you!
Beauty and truth are coming from the same (divine) source. As our overlords are frantically trying to cut of mankind from its natural (universal, divine...choose your word) origins, they do this by inverting the principles of truth and beauty into their contraries.
Tremendous essay. Atheiologue is a valuable word, going to follow your links re: right v left hemispheres because I had had a similar but less well-considered idea along similar lines. V good stuff.
Thank you. Huge fan of your work too. Billionaire Psycho shared Men of Quality recently, and I subscribed just before you published Memphis. Hope you don't make us wait a year for your next piece!
Yes since getting the chudstack.com domain I have been writing more, next piece soon tm
Can't believe you snagged that domain.
Just yesterday I looked down at the lid of a coffee I bought, where it said "Attention, Chaud!"
I read it as "Attention, Chud!" at first, lol.
Alethiologue
Outstanding. The Regime is stumbling about, looking to start a fight with enemies foreign or domestic, whose ranks are growing with each outrage. Blue satrapies are furiously passing laws making illegal the possession of semiautomatic rifles. The rulers of Charles Haywood's 'Brawndo Tyranny' fear getting Ceasescu'ed when things fall apart. No Israelis will be dancing when that happens, but practically everyone else in the world will go for a twirl on the dance floor when this Regime collapses.
Their sheer stupidity is almost offensive, isn't it? It's a collection of unimpressive morons in possession of history's most powerful technologies. The worst part about all of this is the embarrassment of being ruled by these people.
Yes, unless the worst part is that these people actually manage to convert our not-so-long-ago liberal democracies into what Eugyppius calls pseudodemocracies. Manage to become coup-enforcing despotism Capos. His recent posts on German "politics" are pretty chilling.
Manage to convert? I'd say the conversion happened some time ago.
You can glean some of my reasons for hesitancy about saying the conversion has happened from the first part of this 2015 piece I wrote on the Late Republican period of Rome, which establishes that it remains unclear to this day when the Republic fell. https://www.nationalreview.com/postmodern-conservative/late-republic-studies-four-good-roman-lessons-carl-eric-scott/
In the long term we can expect to see a renewed interest in organic cognitive function/development as an alternative to the mechanistic approach. The emergent counter-elite will develop paedagogies and self-improvement techniques, leaving AI and virtual reality for the drones.
As speciation sets in we will see a bifurcation of the population between those shaped wholly by the regime's culture and those shaped by underground, counter-cultural, neo-Rosicurian currents. Can't help but think of mentats and the Bene Gesserit.
You beat me to it with the Dune reference. Was going to say, I don't think we'll have to wait that long - the popularity of Dune suggests a hunger for precisely this kind of organic development.
Your analysis reminds me of a line from the movie The Martian: “Every day will be slightly darker than the last, too subtle to notice.” The Leviathan wants its aspirations to be discreet, yet seem inexorable.
An unmentioned theme underpinning your narrative is the role of friction as a braking system on those aspirations. It’s the Leviathan’s most vexing nemesis — the resistive medium that prevents it from achieving its absolute nature. The Leviathan presents itself as the ideal sovereign — infallible, omnipotent, omniscient. But it is subject, as Clausewitz said, to the “impediments to smooth action produced by thousands of individuals” that populate its ranks…to the “numerous chance events which touch everything…” to the “numerous difficulties that inhibit accurate execution of the precise plans that theory tends to formulate.” The more complex its machinations, the denser the friction. The more lubricants (money, venal offices, managerial mechanics) it applies, the more it finds itself intensifying the effects of friction. It aspires to produce Emerald City — but delivers Kensington, Philadelphia. It aspires to wield AI for ultimate control — and creates Gemini. It foregoes merit in hiring university Presidents — and selects serial plagiarists.
Like the wizard in Oz, the Leviathan alternatively costumes itself as a scary giant, a seductive beauty, a terrifying beast, or a cleansing fire. But it is, in fact, an organized anarchy bloated with humbuggery. It is tuned to routinized responses to predictable behavior, so when it faces unfamiliar and unexpected contingencies (civil disobedience by truckers and farmers, flooding of prompts, poisoning of data, mass mockery) friction takes the wheel.
In “War of the Flea,” Robert Taber spoke of the advantages of irregular forces — fleas — over the dog’s (a military opponent’s) disadvantages: “too much to defend, too small, ubiquitous and agile an enemy to come to grips with.” Friction can exhaust even the most formidable dog. Friction by itself won’t rescue a subject population, but it is a stalwart, reliable and exploitable ally. As the Dalai Lama said, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
Fantastic comment. Social friction is a powerful weapon; it's largely what brought down the COVID regime. Then of course there's the Regime's tendency towards narcissistic self-deception, towards wishful thinking. It's important to remember that the future is never as sparkling and glorious, or as nightmarish and awful, as one imagines. When it arrives it is always much more banal than expected, and we should temper our hopes and fears accordingly.
It’s important to remember that our luciferian overlords also employ the same fleas and mosquitoes for their purposes. These are your neighbors, local workers, police, teachers, BLM and Troon cultists.
They sit behind their gated walls with private and public security laughing at our silly protests. They’ll harass the protestors, jail them, de-bank them and wait it out. They’re not experiencing any hardships resultant of the protests.
Straight Badass analysis!
You’re 100% right.
I would like to add only that the Leviathan creates its own problems — because it wants to steer people in an unnatural way.
If the Leviathan did anything that was agreeable, things might actually work. But then, its goals would never come to fruition.
always fight
from where you are
with the means at hand
~
friction is a brilliant characterization
a thousand sharp feathers
-empire can not match that
What a marvellous, mind-blowing essay, John. Much food for thought; I’ll be mulling over this for an age (in the nicest possible way). I was particularly struck by the analogy of the Regime’s similarity to the left brain’s functionality & its blindness to the right brain. This rings true & gives us hope when we night feel overwhelmed by the ‘woke’ hive mind that denies reality & insists their chimera is the truth. Can’t say more yet as I have a deal to think about. Many thanks for a wonderful read.
Can I post this on X for others to read?
Absolutely, share away.
https://twitter.com/martianwyrdlord/status/1763777405422911576?t=Yjc5-ZO98GSNP2NLj0bZig&s=19
If X/Twitter lets you. xD
John Carter dropping this banger so fast I can't believe he's not John Carter.ai.
*squints suspiciously.*
👀
I've drawn the gaze of JohnGPT! TIme to shill!
https://open.substack.com/pub/argomend/p/the-laymans-guide-to-electricity-bde?r=28g8km&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Suggest you use a proper link i.e. not an 'open.' link ;)
The open ones inconvenient or something? I thought newfangled tech like that was more civilized than just copy-pasting the address bar, if people still know what that is.
https://argomend.substack.com/p/the-laymans-guide-to-electricity-bde
I still remember when they taught computer and typing classes because I was in them. They had a textbook about the Internet too. I used the 3d printed save icon and heard the scream of dial-up, both of which I don't miss but still like.
The open links go straight to the app, which I personally find irksome.
reject technological integreation return to separate formats
I personally don't like newer mobile-compatible websites even if I understand why. Enough with the layer cake webpages, just gimme a menu!
Lol, the scream of dial-up. Never thought about it that way, but it's exactly right.
The eldritch information entity that is the Internet crawls through the phone lines to you.
I do not often express personal experiences on substack articles, however, this brilliant essay merits that expression for its aptness.
Approximately 20 years ago, I was startled out of a dream (in which I believed myself to be awake) by a physical, as well as spiritual experience, of a veil or membrane being ripped away from between the two halves of my brain. I was transported to a Universe of such richness and wonder, a realm of infinite knowing that cannot be explained in words.
Perhaps John Keats' poem Ode on a Grecian Urn best describes it:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Sounds like a glancing encounter with ultimate reality.
An encounter that continues. A few years prior to this experience I was vouchsafed a numinous vision of the underlying Field of Consciousness that connects everything. There are no adequate words to describe this Beauty, but it transforms one's life forever.
Description is impossible. All one can do is try to point at the Moon; the finger is not it.
"It is purely extractive, providing nothing of value, existing solely for itself."
Yes. Imagine waking up inside that kind of mind every morning.
Does such a mind ever really wake up?
They are the parasitical plutocrats of our time. They wish to feast on our "flesh".
"When you see that in order to produce you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice-You may know that your society is doomed." ~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Crazy how this only became more relevant over time.
Wow. Almost seventy years ago. Truth is timeless.
> We need only loosen the controls, and allow water to find its own level.
And now, for the first time in my entire fucking life, I understand why Liberalism was invented. Recall: it's progenitors were revolting against feudalism. Feudalism couldn't have been much more different that what's described in this essay. And now, I do actually see how and in what way Liberalism isn't only true, but obviously so.
It's own decay into Woke came later.
As Nietzsche said, so long as liberalism had something to push against it was heroic.