Interview with John Morgan of Arktos

Jan 9th, 2012
by Brett Stevens.
137 comments

This is a continuation of our interview with John Morgan, Editor-in-Chief of Arktos. This innovative firm publishes books about alternatives to modernity, including traditionalist, new right and ecofuturist literature. John was kind enough to take the time answer a lengthy interview, of which the final part is presented here.


In The Problem of Democracy, Alain de Benoist re-states many of the criticisms Plato had of Greek democracy. Is this a recurring problem? What’s your assessment of de Benoist’s thesis?

The New Right authors frequently refer to the Greeks when analyzing modern civilization, since in those ideas we get a sense of what civilization was back then, before all the accretions of our time. While I found much food for thought in that book, I must admit that de Benoist’s ultimate point remains muddled to me. At points he seems on the verge of advocating a return to rule by an aristocratic elite, but then pulls back and calls for direct democracy and frequent referendums. I don’t see what that would achieve apart from making society even more chaotic than it already is. While I think de Benoist’s achievement is unparalleled by any other living philosopher, I do think that he’s worked too hard to try to escape the (inaccurate) “neo-fascist” label with which he’s always been burdened.


Do you think the division between Left and Right is accurate? This question exists on two levels: first, the concepts themselves – do Left and Right exist separately as concepts? The second level is political parties. Do we have any true Leftist or Rightist parties today?

I assume we’re talking about the United States? As I mentioned earlier, if we apply the traditional, European concepts of Left and Right, there has never been a true Right in America, since the true Right is anti-democratic, hierarchical, and anti-secular. The Constitution itself is based on liberal principles, which is what the American Revolution was about in the first place. That’s why I’ve never understood why some people in our circles are so obsessed with Ron Paul. Yes, he seems marginally better than the other candidates, but ultimately, there’s not much in his thought that corresponds to the true Right. That being said, I do draw distinctions between different schools of American politics. The paleoconservatives, and voices such as Pat Buchanan’s, are much closer to the ideals of the true Right than anything we see in mainstream politics today. I see very little of interest in any of the political parties. The Republicans may make an occasional ideological gesture, but it’s always done to placate their base and never amounts to any lasting change in American society. And these days, the neoconservatives have come to play such a prominent role in Republican discourse, which, as many writers have shown, has its roots in Trotskyism!


Do you think the New Right and the more ideologically consistent elements of the American Right, like the paleoconservatives, can be reconciled? It seems the New Right is not fond of Americanization, but they are less clear about America itself.

I’m not certain. While there is definitely common ground between the two, there are also very big differences. One of the most important is the New Right’s identification, following Nietzsche, of Christianity as the root of the West’s ills. The paleoconservatives are very concerned with the preservation of America’s Christian identity. While I am sympathetic to the New Right intellectually speaking, I think it’s definitely true that it won’t be possible to build any effective political ideology around the idea of rejecting Christianity.

As for the issue of Americanization, the issue there is the exportation of the worst of American culture into all the corners of the globe, not so much an issue with America in itself. I don’t have any problem with that. Popular culture in America has been detrimental to the nature of our own society, so it’s hard to imagine how it could have a positive effect in other countries. But it’s certainly not the case that the New Right rejects America and its people as a whole.


As an American, do you think American hegemony has brought anything positive to the world? What would you prefer that your birth-country would do with its time?

I don’t embrace knee-jerk anti-Americanism. To say that everything in America or that America does is bad is incredibly simplistic. I’ve come to appreciate that most acutely after living in India. At the same time, I think America was at its best in its early decades, when America (mostly) kept to itself and the government didn’t intrude into its citizens’ lives. Things started to go wrong with the Civil War, when the government placed itself at the disposal of northern bankers and industrialists and declared war on a segment of its own population. In the twentieth century, America has convinced itself that it has a God-given obligation to convert the rest of the world into a facsimile of itself, through bombing campaigns if necessary, while enriching itself by peddling the most degenerate cultural products known in all of history. Meanwhile, the government has been continually eroding the rights of its own citizens. As the economy slides further into the toilet, I really do think they are preparing for the day when we are all serfs on an enormous, Third World plantation. I think America needs to be reorganized along communitarian lines, as the New Right advocates. Even the New Right authors themselves acknowledge that many of the ideas they discuss actually have their origins in some of the more radical American social thinkers, such as the Southern Agrarians. America has the unique distinction of being the only country that was founded on abstract principles rather than on tribal necessity. In one sense, it’s a weakness, since we lack the traditions and rootedness that other nations possess by their very nature, but it can also be a strength, since we have a long tradition of living in communities that try to retain their unique identity while living in harmony with the others (provided that they are not under threat). So, in one sense, America is inherently a “New Right” country!

In the twentieth century, America has convinced itself that it has a God-given obligation to convert the rest of the world into a facsimile of itself, through bombing campaigns if necessary, while enriching itself by peddling the most degenerate cultural products known in all of history.


What is “liberalism”? Is it a philosophy, or aggregate of negative opinions toward other philosophies?

I have recently been reading a book by the recently-deceased American Catholic conservative scholar, Thomas Molnar, entitled The Counter-Revolution. In it, he identifies the common aspect of all liberal movements dating from the French Revolution, whether we are talking about the Soviet Union or present-day Democrats in America, as atheism. I think that’s ultimately what it is at its root. Without God, we can only think in terms of workers, productivity, comfort, “human rights” (whatever that means), and so on – all the things that liberals advocate, and all of which are based upon a reduction of humanity to utilitarianism. All that is best in any culture is that which strives for the ineffable and the transcendent.


If you could publish new works through Arktos, what would they be? Are you looking forward to any original works that are being written now? If so, how do budding authors submit their works, and what would be required for those works to be considered?

Oh, there are literally hundreds of books we’d like to do! Plus we keep getting new submissions all the time. It’s just a question of resources and what we can acquire the rights to do. Personally, I would love to publish some of Ernst Jünger’s works in English, as well as some of the works of other Conservative Revolutionary authors. I would also like to do more Evola, and branch out into the wider world of traditionalism. There’s always been a sharp divide between Guénonians, Schuonians and Evolians. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I would love to have Arktos be the first publisher to bridge those chasms. We’ve already done so in a small way with our journal, The Initiate, which has published both Evolian and Guénonian/Schuonian articles side-by-side. I’d also like to see us get into more American material, especially paleoconservatism.

As for original works, we do have several coming up. There’s the Tito Perdue novel I already mentioned. We will also be publishing The Clash of History by Dominique Venner, a French author who has been quite influential in France for decades but who is virtually untranslated. This is a book he wrote specifically with Arktos in mind, and features Socratic dialogues between himself and various figures from European history. We also plan to publish a translation of a book of Alain de Benoist’s essays on the current global financial crisis. There will likely be another book by Kerry Bolton on the horizon as well.

If someone has a manuscript to submit to us, we’re more than happy to consider it. You can send it directly to me (john-at-arktos.com) or to info-at-arktos.com (replace -at- with @). Just please be certain that your work is a serious one that says something original and that will continue to have relevancy for some time into the future – overly topical works which will go out-of-date quickly aren’t worth the effort involved in publishing them in book form.

Parts I II III IV.

Posted in: Books.
Tagged: · ·

Reality

Jan 8th, 2012
by Forest Johnson.
39 comments

There’s been a lot of talk, here, recently, about the nature of ‘reality’.
Philosophers have been going on about it forever, and the more people that become interested in philosophy, and philosophers, the more they go on about it, too.
Maybe that’s good, maybe not. But it can get a little tiresome, hearing people endlessly quote someone else’s view of this slipperiest of things, and their often uninformed opinions of it.

So here’s what I’m gonna do:
While other people have been busy leading more or less ‘normal’ lives, I’ve been not-so-busily engaged in living a completely different sort of life. A life of adventure, uncertainty, no little danger, and complete material poverty.
This has given me some rather unusual life-experience. I’ve done, been, seen and known things that very few people ever get to approach. And since I’ve just knocked back some rather good Mead, the traditional drink of warriors and shamans, I’m gonna hold forth on some of those more unusual things I’ve run into, along the way.
Well, OK, not some of those things, but rather one of those things…
Reality.

It probably started, many years ago, with an LSD trip. A tiny pill called a microdot: scarcely larger than a pin-head.
People who don’t know, think LSD is a drug. It isn’t. The dose one ingests is so incredibly minuscule that it couldn’t possibly have the effect it does, if were merely a drug.
No. LSD is a catalyst. It works in parallel with chemicals already present within the body, and increases their function many-many-fold.
That first LSD trip is the only one that counts. Subsequent experiences are like trying to shoot a hole-in-one, a second time. Not gonna happen, see?
The first one makes it unmistakably obvious that our everyday perceptions of life are almost totally arbitrary, and almost completely dulled-down. We may as well be sleep-walking, while dreaming the most boring of dreams, and one that never, ever changes.
That’s almost all I’m gonna say about LSD, since it’s a whole study in itself.
It’s a jump-start to consciousness, is all. Not consciousness itself.

Following the LSD experience, I chanced to read a weird book by some odd chap named Lobsang Rampa.
It was about the ‘third eye‘. That’s right. And you thought you only had two. Wrong!
Finding this third eye, however, is troublesome, and even now I’m not sure I know any more about it than I did then. But no matter. The point is, it caused me to embark upon a lifelong quest to plumb the depths – or scale the heights – of spirituality and consciousness. How many people do you know that have made a career of something like that? None, I’ll bet. So read on: you may never get another chance to read anything quite like this…

Drugs, of any kind, don’t do it. They are toxic, expensive, illegal, and can only hint at something that cannot be attained under their influence. Forget drugs.
The only thing that will do the trick is breathing. Yes, you read that right.
Westerners hardly breathe at all. Are you ever aware of your breathing, except when you are short of breath, or sick? No. If you are, you’re pretty unusual.
Anyway: to get anywhere, consciousness-wise, you gotta get down and breathe. Consciously. Deeply. Slowly, and deliberately. And you gotta do it for months!
Then you gotta clear everything out of your mind. Every image. Every sound. Every thought.
No memories and no hopes. No plans and no regrets. No expectations and no illusions.
Nothing.

Don’t try this at at home, unless you’re deadly serious. It’s actually dangerous. You can go insane. OK? You have been warned.

I did all these mildly dangerous things, over months, even years, along with many other things that may or may not have influenced the final outcome. Which went something like this…

“I” ceased to be human, and I ceased to be “me”. I became identity-less, and instead blossomed out into – first – a mountain. Then the mountain and the earth it rested upon. Then these things, plus the planet they were part of. Then the space they occupied. Then the whole universe, and beyond that, into everything, everywhere, always.

I started laughing, because of the realization that this was God. Not some moody old man somewhere in the sky. Me, it, this, everything. This was God. Aha! And how absurdly simple everything was, and that is why it is so invisible to people, who expect anything worth going-for, to be very complex and difficult to achieve.

Knowledge. What is knowledge? It is air in the lungs. It exists. With or without lungs to breathe it. It is there. Always. When you need some of it, it is there.
It is not something that can be owned, learned, taught, remembered, or kept.
Exactly like the enlightenment I was now experiencing.
What it is, when it is, and nothing more, or less.

Reality is reality, whether it is witnessed, lived through, experienced, or not.
It is the lattice that ties everything together. Pure energy. Pure consciousness.
Dumb-ass scientists are finally beginning to uncover this impossibility, on the quantum level.
They have gone to an awful lot of expense and trouble to “discover” this stuff, when all it needed was a bit of applied breathing.

Sub atomic particles have no default condition. They do what they feel like doing. They live.
You and I consist of these sub atomic particles. So does everything else.
God is their sum total.

Got it?

Don’t worry about reality, and what – exactly – it is.
You’ll never know, if you’re busy with trying to define it.
When you are able to detect it, you will no longer wonder.
You will have become it, and ‘you’ will no longer matter.
Not that ‘you’ ever did, in reality.

Posted in: Ontology.
Tagged: · · ·

Leftist

Jan 7th, 2012
by Brett Stevens.
16 comments

In times of political confusion, people distrust the very words they need to use to explain what they want.

For example, you will often hear that left and right no longer mean anything, or that terms like “leftist” are made-up nonsense. Even worse, people use terms like liberal, leftist, left-winger and progressive as if they meant different things.

And if you do use a term like “leftist,” some burn-out person will show up and accuse you of xenophobia — of grouping everyone who does not agree with you into one big camp, and using the convenient label “leftist” to show they’re not part of the cool kids crowd.

It’s not hard to puzzle this one out. First we start by realizing that no thing has an exact term for it; terms are symbols we use because we agree on what they refer to. Next, we have to look at those meanings, and see where they are common and where they differ.

Liberal, progressive, leftist, socialist, classical liberal, Marxist, Communist, neoconservative, anarchist and liberal democrat: these mean the same thing. Every one of them has one idea that is not held in common with other beliefs, and that idea is the central notion of liberalism.

This notion is individual equality, which is a vague term that means that society is obligated to treat any thought, notion, desire or judgment from any individual as “equally valid,” or as a reasonable idea, even if contradicted by reality.

Let’s drill that down: humankind comes before nature. Whatever a human being wants to think is true is more important than nature and her laws, which regulate the consequences of that behavior. Liberalism is a blank check to ignore the effects of one’s actions and to focus instead on human Feelings about them.

You will see this in every liberal law or policy. They will talk about moral imperatives, or even political necessities, but at the heart these philosophies endorse the same idea, which is that it is socially pleasing to treat everyone as “correct” and thus we must do away with reality.

Appearing in the latest edition of The Journal of Politics published by Cambridge University Press, the research focused on 2,000 subjects from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. By matching genetic information with maps of the subjects’ social networks, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults, but only if they had an active social life in adolescence.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter affecting brain processes that control movement, emotional response, and ability to experience pleasure and pain. Previous research has identified a connection between a variant of this gene and novelty-seeking behavior, and this behavior has previously been associated with personality traits related to political liberalism. – “Researchers Find a ‘Liberal Gene’,” Science Daily, October 27, 2010

Novelty-seeking requires that you put aside the results of your actions and instead focus on how they make you feel. You might need to do something to achieve a result, but that’s boring, so focus on sensations instead and do something new or otherwise stimulating.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are stimulated by results and not the process used to reach it. For conservatives, reality and natural law comes before human feelings, desires and judgments. The world is bigger than us, and results matter more than sensations.

These differing viewpoints manifest themselves in different goals that each group seeks. As you can see, these two goal-sets are incompatible, and the only reason American politics “works” is that we pretend two groups with radically different needs can occupy the same country.

As liberals tend to like pluralism, or the idea that many contradictory viewpoints can exist at once in the same place, this plays into their hands. The less order in a society, the stronger the liberal viewpoint, because the individual alone is sovereign and thus opts for a self-based point of view.

To gauge participants’ physiological responses, they were shown a series of images on a screen. Electrodes measured subtle skin conductance changes, which indicated an emotional response. The cognitive data, meanwhile, was gathered by outfitting participants with eyetracking equipment that captured even the most subtle of eye movements while combinations of unpleasant and pleasant photos appeared on the screen.

While liberals’ gazes tended to fall upon the pleasant images, such as a beach ball or a bunny rabbit, conservatives clearly focused on the negative images – of an open wound, a crashed car or a dirty toilet, for example. – “Biology of politics: Liberals roll with the good, conservatives confront the bad,” Science Blog

Conservatives focus on the negative because their goal is to avoid the negative as a result. Liberals focus on the positive because it is their goal to feel a positive experience. Those who are worried about end results focus on those before feelings, because feelings can be deceptive.

Above it was said that a series of terms amounted to the same thing because they have the same basic meaning. It’s more accurate to say that they all converge on the same thing, meaning that they are different degrees of the same idea and all end up in the same place.

All movements left of center become liberal, and advocate for humanism, egalitarianism, individualism, utilitarianism, equality and pacifism. They value any idea that suggests what humans want to be the truth is the truth. Like The Enlightenment, they replace god/nature with the human form and desires.

All movements right of center become rightist, and advocate for Social Darwinism, naturalism, reverence, structure and everything that suggests natural law determines “truth” by the results of causes, not by human intentions, morality, desires or socially popular ideas.

If the American experience has taught us anything, it is to respect this difference because it is the only difference that matters. We can invent a hundred terms for each of these two ideas, but they remain the same in substance.

All that remains is for each of us to ask ourselves: where on this spectrum do we fall? Closer to the left, or to the right? And we should consider the bedfellows we will have, and what type of society that will produce, before we answer.

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · ·

The end of liberalism

Jan 6th, 2012
by Brett Stevens.
25 comments

Humankind can act quickly based on its own notions, but then we wait for nature and its natural laws to shape the end result. Even when we control the material means of our future, consequences are governed by the non-material interaction of forces, like information or mathematics.

Starting with The Enlightenment, European society went liberal with the idea that each individual’s thoughts, desires and judgments were equally valid. Mankind became more important than nature. This meant that our thoughts were more important than the consequences of our actions.

It took several centuries to see this, which was only appropriate, because it took several centuries to reach that stage of degeneracy. The root of liberalism was probably a prosperous society which sheltered its incompetents, malcontents and manipulators.

From that view, the following article takes on a different tone:

Eighty years on, it would be easy to sit back and reassure ourselves that the worst could never happen again. But that, of course, was what people told each other in 1932, too.

The lesson of history is that tough times often reward the desperate and dangerous, from angry demagogues to anarchists and nationalists, from seething mobs to expansionist empires. – The Daily Mail

They are telling us that when times are bad, the bad come out of the woodwork.

An alternate history: when times are good, the bad are able to rule because of the complacency of most people, who can’t think past when their next paycheck will arrive.

In fact, what we see through the last 2000 years of history is a process of overcoming. The intelligent rise despite the others dragging them down, and societies survive because when things are bad, the people who have been pointing out the incompetence of our social system are able to temporarily win out.

Think about the people you know. Which is more likely, that they live in denial, or that they’re magical geniuses who have everything under control until they are periodically interrupted by violent realists?

With the hazy years of The Enlightenment, we declared that each human being is more valid than nature, which is a way of talking about natural laws and the consequences of our actions determined by such laws. This legitimized denial of reality and endorsed illusions.

It just took a while to play out. Eventually, it found a voice in modern liberalism/leftism in 1789. This movement snowballed and when war was declared on the nationalists — the archetype of right-wing ideas — in China, Japan, Germany, Austria and Italy during WWII, the left found itself on top.

Its only problem after that was Communism, which is an extreme form of leftism like fascism is an extreme form of rightism. Communism was the new bogeyman.

Communist theory teaches them to believe that the most effective way to break the will of the opposition is to de-legitimize its ruling class, degrade its culture, destroy its confidence in its own institutions and its own way of life.

Hu Jintao believes that the West is waging a conscious memetic war against Communist China – because he knows that Communists including himself have been waging a conscious memetic war against Western civilization since the 1840s. Sadly, this is not yesterday’s news.

What Jintao can also see, and the reason he is actually right to fear memetic warfare, is that the West has been seriously damaged by Communist successes at memetic subversion. The damage didn’t end when the Soviet Empire collapsed, because too many people in the West internalized and naturalized Soviet attack propaganda. Many of its tropes have become tribal shibboleths of major Western political tendencies, despite being just as wrong and just as toxic as when they were first uttered. – Eric S. Raymond

The leftists pondered this, and then introduced Marxist ideas in a new way — through culture. This culminated in the West in the hippie revolutions of 1968, which showed a cultural and social force overcoming knowledge of history, politics, economics and even common sense.

When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991, the cultural Marxists reached out to their most promising allies, namely those in the commercial world. They did not ally themselves with the established industries, but “alternative” service industries like entertainment, media and art.

Eventually they expanded into other industries. The two were ideal pairs: consumerism and commerce benefit from having zero standards so they can sell whatever they want to an audience that, lacking a cultural or moral center, needs lots of products to fill the void. And leftists want permissiveness.

This new movement coincided with the 1968 generation making it into their 40s and 50s. During the 1990s, it seemed that hippie ideals had grown up, put on suits and won out over everything else. At least, they were more popular by the numbers.

After a brief interruption for a Republican president in the United States, this movement made a bold move to seize power in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama. But then a curious thing happened: leftist ideology requires the notion of an oppressor, or an opposing force, holding it back.

As of 2009, nothing held it back. It implemented its grand designs and in response, people in society began to endorse its ideas. This coincided with the results of the grandparents of those ideas, put into motion a half-century before, becoming apparent.

Results did not match promises.

As a result, in 2009 the reign of 1789 unofficially came to an end. World liberalism collapsed because its ideas simply did not work. Most people are still unaware of this, but like all truly profound social shifts, this one is occurring underground.

It is now widely accepted that the years of New Labour government were an almost unalloyed national disaster. Whichever measure you take – moral, social, economic, or the respect in which Britain is held in the world – we went into reverse.

Nevertheless, historians may come to judge that these 13 years of Labour misrule served a vital purpose. In retrospect, the Brown/Blair period may be seen as a prolonged experiment which taught the liberal Left that its ideas cannot work, do not work, and have no chance of ever working.

…So rampant and all-pervasive was the influence of this liberal-Left elite that by the end almost every meaningful action taken by the democratically elected John Major government could be sabotaged or blocked outright by a progressive alliance, which stretched through the Civil Service, the BBC, and the universities.

…A sea change is at work. In practically every area of British public life – state spending, the economy, education, welfare, the European Union (where Ed Miliband refused to condemn Cameron’s pre-Christmas veto), mass immigration, law and order – Conservatives are winning the argument and taking policy in their direction. – The Telegraph

Right now, world liberalism retains one primary strength: it is still very popular. Liberalism offers the idea that we can change our world by altering the effects of our actions without changing our actions, and that is a pleasing notion. It suggests we can keep doing what we want and turn out OK.

However, an increasing group have recognized that like drug addiction or other forms of denial, liberalism will destroy our society just as all denial has destructive effects. As a result, a backlash has formed and while we must be very patient, the downfall of liberalism has begun.

Posted in: Globalism.
Tagged: · ·

Experts

Jan 5th, 2012
by Forest Johnson.
14 comments

Reassurance. Everybody seeks this. We need to feel assured, especially when we are young, that we are OK. That we are fine. That we are knowledgeable, acceptable, impressive, wise, worthy, loved, whatever…
We grow up looking for this reassurance from outside of ourselves:
Mothers, fathers, teachers, leaders.
As we mature, we seek it elsewhere:
Religion, philosophers, experts…

Think about this for a moment.

Is there a point, in our development, where we have gained all the reassurance we are ever going to get?
Do we reach a point where there is no more of this thing?
What then?
Where do we look for reassurance then?
The obvious and clear answer is, of course, within ourselves, but that topic will have to wait for another day. So…

I had a moment, years ago, where I became so knowledgeable about computers, and computing, that I ran out of people to ask, about a certain problem, or a certain solution; a point at which I realized that all the people I was asking for answers, knew less than I did…
This was a very uncomfortable feeling. What was I going to do now?
Almost certainly, there is always someone, somewhere, who will know more, but finding them becomes exponentially more difficult, over time.
Because one is constantly learning, all that time, and adding to one’s store of knowledge, and using that knowledge to create new and unexplored – or unheard-of – ways in which to solve problems. Isn’t one?

I find, more and more, that no: one is not. What holds true for me, does not necessarily hold true, for others.
The things I do, without even knowing I do them, or that they may or may not be anything exceptional, are often things that possibly only I can do, or at best, things that not so very many people can do. That I may – in fact – be somewhat unlike the many.

I have this ability. I can hear, see, or read something. I can then consider it. I can then take this input, and improve upon it, or add something to it, and come up with an entirely new and different thing, that I have never seen before.
My great failing has always been to assume that, because I can do this, that everybody else can do it too.
My great failing #2 has always been to assume that my mental gymnastics are not gymnastics, at all, but merely mundane ‘thinking’.

I claim, often, that I do not think. Because whatever it is, that I am doing, does not seem to me to be thinking.
But obviously, I am doing something, or how could I be problem-solving, in the way I am able to problem-solve?
Or perhaps it is that I am actually thinking, while whatever it is that others refer to as thinking, is – in fact – not thinking at all?
Whatever the answer is, it becomes ever more clear to me that I do not operate as others do. Some others. Possibly all others.
So where does this leave me?

One place it very definitely leaves me, is in a state where I realize that whatever I use in place of ‘thought’, I can never assume it is any such thing, and consequently, that anybody else is able to follow it. That no matter what I say, or claim, is able to be interpreted accurately by anyone else, hearing, or reading it.
It’s a bit like The Tower Of Babel: Everyone speaking gibberish, and nobody understanding any of it. With the best of intentions – here again, is a concept I am prone to assume, without any proof of its existence – what we discover we have, is a complete communication-breakdown.

I have learned, over the many years, to say what I mean, and mean what I say. Consistently and with no exceptions. Honestly and without guile. Clearly, concisely, and accurately. I omit any words that do not serve the message. I do not ‘um’, or ‘ah’. I do not ‘that is to say’, or ‘to all intents and purposes’. I do not ‘by the same token’, or ‘all things being equal’…
And still, no matter what I say, mostly I remain grossly misunderstood.

Oftentimes I was likely to view this as a grand failing on my part. That somehow, in spite of the rather great care I customarily took, to get things right, that I was still somehow being vague, ambiguous, or unclear. Until, abruptly, I decided I was not.

People run on rails. They get ideas. And these ideas lead them to wherever they are most comfortable going. No input is going to change that, unless those people, themselves, discover that rails lead only to the same old, predictable place. No other destination is possible. Rails may be useful for some things, but understanding is not one of them.

Take a look at the pictures: the first one is what happened to my overly tall chimney pipe after three feet of snow slid down the roof and wiped it out. It was not the first time this had happened, but I finally decided it was going to be the last.
I enquired of experts, how I might secure my chimney, to proof it against yet another occurrence of this.
These experts suggested this, and that, that and this, and not one of them could offer what sounded anything like good advice.
These were experts, you know. Professionals who do this sort of thing for a living. Perhaps that is why, in every case, either their solution would obviously fail, thus enabling them to come back and do the job a second, or third time. Or why it was so prohibitively expensive, that I couldn’t – or wouldn’t – even consider it.
Now take a look at the second picture:
You will notice a miniature roof-like thing – called a ‘dormer’ – through which the chimney pipe protrudes. Its purpose is to support the pipe, while decreasing its exposed height, while blending into the existing roof design, while decreasing the pitch down which snow is prone to slide. It has built-in bird/bat boxes, and enables me to access the pipe for sweeping, each spring…

As far as I know, and according to the reluctantly-impressed experts: such a thing has never been seen before. I invented it.

Am I a chimney-pipe expert? Not as far as I know. I invented something, when the need arose to invent it. Did this involve thinking? I have no idea. I pondered the problem for some time, then suddenly leaped into action, scaling the 12/12 pitch steel roof, in the heat of summer, and doing the entire thing myself, over six weeks, at age 55. So I’m mad. I know that. But can I think?

Experts know stuff. That is why we call them experts. According to us (but quite possibly, not to them), Heidegger was an expert. Aristotle. Plato. Socrates. Jesus was an expert. Schopenhauer. C.S. Lewis. All of them knew what they knew. When they knew it. Which, in every case, was at a time when nobody else knew what they knew. Which is, when you consider it, a time that is no different to anybody else’s time, whenever their time is. Any one of them, and any one of us, can discover – using our ancestral background of knowledge – something previously undiscovered. Any one of them, and any one of us, can take what is known, and add something more to it. To create something previously unknown or unrealized. This is to take ‘tradition’, and offer something of ourselves, to it. To honour it by sacrificing to it, our own best efforts, to actively renew its life, and carry it forwards, towards eternity.
To merely quote existing words, or pay lip-service to existing traditions, is hardly the same thing, and requires no thought, no effort, whatsoever.

This is a mish-mash of an essay, for sure. Several threads intertwine and weave around the helix of each other. There’s probably something in it, somewhere. But it will mean nothing to you, unless it does. It is what goes on, in place of thought, and whether or not that has any value, is – dear reader – entirely up to you to decide. It has value to me, and that – I suppose – is why I wrote it.

Experts.
People who have stopped being useful. Stopped expanding their knowledge-base, and severed their capacity to develop.
People who employ whatever they know to dupe others into buying it from them.
The hallmark of such people – the ones who proclaim their expertise – is an inability to consider anything they do not, themselves, already know. And to exert themselves, strenuously, to prevent anything that they do not, themselves, already know, from ever being known.

Posted in: Socialization.
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Fatalism

Jan 4th, 2012
by Brett Stevens.
35 comments

Once upon a time, the notions of Nietzsche made sense: when we threw out God, we lost all sense of value or struggling for truth and sank instead into a hideous mire of nihilism.

As time went on it became clear that nihilism, or the denial of all truths or meanings, was more a refutation of the human demand that any human notion be considered “truth” if someone swore by its importance, than a rejection of the idea that reality exists.

Even further down the line, Nietzsche paled in comparison to everyday experience. To a more seasoned observer, people do not want eternal truths, a God or even eternal life. Most of them despite having some joys secretly detest life and see it as pointless and hope for a true unconsciousness.

Many if not most people relish fatalism, which is denial of any event having meaning and our ability to change outcomes in our lives. They welcome their own obliteration because it absolves them of the burden of caring about the consequences of their actions, or comparing their own lives to what their lives could have been.

This is not much different from the drinking to excess which seems the mark of the modern-day Person of European Descent (POED). We want to obliterate memory, erode awareness and abrade the sensitivity with which we approach questions that may have far-reaching consequences.

Think about being on your deathbed. Other than fear for your own mortality, what are you thinking? Life… mistakes were made. Do those matter, or do they fade away for eternity? If they matter, a horrible realization awaits: we could have done better.

If they fade away, you are “free.” All of life is without effect. No emotional attachment exists, only a brief sense of loss for oneself, which most individuals never really liked anyway. They spent so long hyping it to others, selling it and promoting it that now they’re sick of it.

Fatalism is like a warm place to go where we can forget that we direct the outcomes of our lives. It is denial of the power we hold which conveys escape from blame or regret. When we obliterate the self, we finally are truly free from any cares in the world. Or any meaning.

Posted in: Socialization.
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Vortex

Jan 3rd, 2012
by Brett Stevens.
39 comments

Over the years and centuries, as the failure of the first world to discover inner stability continues, it has become increasingly popular to talk about the “many problems” of humankind. I submit that this is euphemism of the first order.

This species does not have many problems. We have a singular problem, which is dishonesty: we do not talk with intent to communicate about the issues in our world. Aside from all of the possible problems of language itself, or even of different people using different terms, we do not wish for clarity.

For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.

Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we’ll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias, lack of logic and other supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social adaptations that enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however sharply it may depart from the truth. – The New York Times

When we do not intend clarity, we argue to raise our social status above that of others. He’s wrong, I’m right; pick me. Whether we’re searching for mates, business partners, friends or even conning salespeople into helping us despite the huge backlog, social status makes us “important” and so we get ahead.

This is not to say that all people act this way. In fact, the scientists in the article above are probably wrong. Most people argue to win, while a small minority use logic to find answers. Not coincidentally, a small minority is responsible for most of our discoveries.

However, as the majority tends toward deception, and the majority tends to win out, the human pattern is for dishonesty to triumph. This is probably most intense in societies with higher intelligence people, as the spread between “smart enough to fake it” and “smart enough to know the difference” is wider. This is why the places with the smartest people, like Scandinavia or Germany, are the most internally screwed-up despite their great material and technological wealth.

We are raised in post-1789 liberal democracies, which means plurality is the order of the day. That is to say, those with the most votes make the laws, and everyone else circumvents those laws until the facade collapses. In theory, we all tolerate each other, but in reality no one gets what they want.

We thus experience constant internal upheaval and political infighting. Honesty at the political level is secondary to its source, which is honesty at the personal level. When confronted with information we do not like, we can deny it, choose to stop arguing or discussing it, leave the room or simply re-program our minds to not consider it.

Denial beats conscience. With denial of reality on a personal level, an audience for pleasant lies is created, and they then shower wealth and acclaim onto those who codify the lies as science, law, logic or morality.

Since some date long ago when we lost sight of reality, this cult has been gaining strength. Now few truth-tellers remain. They are buried under a mountain of lies, starting with the notion that we have more than one problem.

Posted in: Politics.
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Interview with John Morgan of Arktos

Jan 2nd, 2012
by Brett Stevens.
29 comments

This is a continuation of our interview with John Morgan, Editor-in-Chief of Arktos. This innovative firm publishes books about alternatives to modernity, including traditionalist, new right and ecofuturist literature. John was kind enough to take the time answer a lengthy interview, of which part III of IV is presented here.


With The Path of Cinnabar, you’ve begun publishing Julius Evola titles. As the dominant voice of radical traditionalism, he merges the Nietzschean critique of herd morality with the upright values of the old Völkisch Right. Are you going to publish more Evola? Do you think my assessment of his ideology was accurate?

Actually, our first Evola translation was Metaphysics of War, which is a collection of essays he originally published in various journals and newspapers during the 1930s and ‘40s. ITP first published it in 2007, and Arktos brought out a new and much-improved edition earlier this year.

I would have to respectfully disagree with your characterization of Evola, however. While Nietzsche was very important to Evola in his youth, and he continually referred to Nietzsche in his work, I don’t think he could accurately be called a Nietzschean. In The Path of Cinnabar, which was written near the end of his life, Evola lauds Nietzsche for his critique of modernity and its problems, but says that the solutions proposed by him were “hazy and dangerous.” Evola believed that a true Übermensch could only achieve genuine transcendence through a study and practice of the techniques advocated in the ancient sacred texts, most especially the Vedic and Buddhist traditions, which Nietzsche was unfamiliar with and uninterested in except in a superficial way. As for the Völkisch Right, while it is true that Evola associated with some representatives of that tradition, such as at the Herrenklub in 1930s Berlin, his own philosophy is very much at odds with it. Again, referring to Cinnabar, Evola criticizes Hitler for having embraced a Völkisch concept of the Reich rather than a more traditional notion of empire as had existed in Europe previously. The examples Evola advocated as ideals go much further back. He wasn’t very interested in anything from modern times. The Holy Roman Empire of the Medieval era, and the Roman Empire of Antiquity, were deemed far superior in Evola’s eyes to any modern ideology or political system.

I don’t really see how one can classify Evola any more specifically than by saying that he was a traditionalist. It wouldn’t even be accurate to say that he had an ideology, since he rejected such modern notions. The only thing that Evola tried to convey in his work was the transcendental perspective and knowledge as conveyed in the world’s sacred texts, and how this knowledge had been put into practice in earlier, healthier eras. He is frequently associated with Fascism and National Socialism by both supporters and detractors, but if one actually reads what he wrote about them, it’s clear that he only saw in those ideologies a hope for them to act as a bridge to something more traditional, rather than systems that were good as an end in themselves. In the last period of his life, he rejected the idea of politics altogether, as he thought that civilization was too far along in the degeneration of Kali-Yuga for any meaningful political redress to be possible.


You’ve published some really provocative books. Tomislav Sunic’s Against Democracy and Equality speaks a dangerous message, which is that the path that Western civilization has taken for the past 200 years is fundamentally wrong. Do you think the average reader of political books is going to be able to accept such a radical concept, even though it’s well-supported by argument and facts?

I’m not certain who the average reader of political books is. If you’re talking about mainstream readers who still believe in American and European sociopolitical structures as they are currently constituted, then yes, I am sure some of our books might be a bit shocking. However, when we make decisions regarding potential new publications, we don’t necessarily look for the most radical or strange ideas and theories, but rather those that we actually think are needed or which we believe people want to read. And speaking of Sunic’s book specifically, I don’t really think that the ideas of the European New Right are all that shocking. I believe that many sensible people respond favorably to them when they are clearly explained, since these ideas emerge from very natural observations about reality. And it seems that more people from all points of the spectrum are beginning to question the assumptions underlying our societies, so I don’t believe that the idea that we are on a wrong course is all that shocking anymore, even if people might disagree about the necessary solutions.
I suppose that one idea that American readers might have trouble grasping at first is the fact that, according to the European political tradition, there is no real Left/Right dichotomy in America. What we have are merely two branches of the liberal tradition with somewhat different priorities – both adhering to the belief that economics is the most crucial aspect of society and trumps all other concerns. In essence, the United States is really as much a single-party system as the Soviet Union was. There is no genuinely Right-wing tradition in America, except for a few tiny groups lurking in the undergrowth.


Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism caught my eye as it is both conservative and forward-looking; most people think of conservatives as backward looking, but his point is that conservatism is based on eternal principles that can be carried forward as well. Do you think that’s accurate?

Yes, I think that is a good description of the theme of the book. In it, Faye describes, accurately I think, the true Right as being divided between traditionalists, who want a return to the ways of life and ideas of the past, and futurists, who want to embrace the latest science and technology to create something entirely new. Faye argues that the way forward is to develop a synthesis of the two – to embrace the new, without turning our backs on the principles which made Western civilization great in the first place. I don’t know that I, personally, agree completely with this idea, as it seems a bit overly idealistic. He proposes that 90% of Europeans will live a traditional life akin to ancient times, while 10% will live a technocratic existence among the fruits of high technology, which seems unworkable to me (although rather like India today!). Still, the book provides much food for thought, and can serve as a good myth to drive us toward a different future, as Faye himself asserts in it.

The nation traditionally refers to a community that shares a common language, culture and ancestry. The idea, which is prevalent in America and France today, that someone is a part of the nation simply by virtue of having been born within the nation’s borders, or because one passed a civics exam, is an entirely modern occurrence which would have puzzled our ancestors.


What is this “New Right” concept, anyway? Right-wing concepts are always nebulous.

That’s a difficult concept to summarize in just a few sentences, but I’ll try. It’s first necessary to explain that the label “New Right” is not a name which its theorists have ever applied to themselves, but is rather one that was given by their detractors. Still, for convenience’s sake, it’s a term that has grudgingly been accepted. There’s not even a unified New Right movement, since it consists of a number of sub-groups and authors with very different philosophies. One of the things they all agree on, however, is that they are attempting to transcend the traditional categories of Left and Right, although I think it’s clear that they draw more from the European Rightist tradition – the “true Right” that Evola spoke of, which existed everywhere prior to the American and French revolutions – than from the Left. These days, the school can be said to be polarized around two individuals, primarily – Alain de Benoist, who founded GRECE, the first New Right group, in France in 1968, and Guillaume Faye, who is an independent author. De Benoist advocates a communitarian solution to Europe’s ills, with small, local communities based on traditional social values and customs with no more than a loose confederation, rather than a central authority, to bind them. Faye, on the other hand, advocates what he terms “Eurosiberia,” which he says will come about after all non-European immigrant populations have been expelled from European soil. It would be an empire stretching from Ireland to Siberia which would respect local communities within its borders, and yet preserve European culture and autonomy from outside influences. This is a very brief summary, but it’s the best I can do here. Interested readers should read Tom Sunic’s Against Democracy and Equality and Michael O’Meara’s New Culture, New Right, which are so far the best – and only! – introductions to the European New Right in English.


Do you draw a distinction between the nation and the nation-state? What is it? Does this mean there’s a difference between nationalism and patriotism?

The nation-state is a modern concept that emerged from the French Revolution, which understands itself as wielding sovereignty over a specific geographical area. The nation traditionally refers to a community that shares a common language, culture and ancestry. The idea, which is prevalent in America and France today, that someone is a part of the nation simply by virtue of having been born within the nation’s borders, or because one passed a civics exam, is an entirely modern occurrence which would have puzzled our ancestors. It’s common now for some on the Right to refer to themselves as “White nationalists,” meaning that they regard all other Whites as part of their community. It’s a step in the right direction, but does a disservice to the many unique nationalities and communities which comprise the White world. I don’t think the answer to the melting pot of America is to set up a melting pot of White peoples. As for patriotism and nationalism, it’s only natural that people from the same cultural and linguistic background should feel a closer affinity with each other than with others, unlike the situation we have in America today. At the same time, however, we can’t deny the role that the nation-states we live in have played in our lives. Even though they are flawed, they are not entirely negative, and we do owe them a certain debt. So, while I feel a kinship with others of European descent, I don’t feel that I can just reject my homeland, the United States, out of hand because it is comprised of people from many different communities. We can call for change, of course, but that doesn’t free us from our obligation to remain good citizens and neighbors.


Do you think the world is on the verge of admitting the past century, and possibly the past two centuries, were an error, and re-tracing its steps to start off in a different direction that is more compatible with our past?

The world is a big place! Are we to speak of the United States, France, Germany, Russia, India, China, Iran, etc., as one? I think it’s impossible to say anything in such broad terms with any meaning. Speaking strictly about America, there does seem to be an increasing sub-culture that questions the assumptions of modernity, but it’s still a very tiny minority. Most Americans, it seems to me, are still convinced that we can save ourselves by “voting the bastards out of Washington” and replacing them with others. That doesn’t suggest to me that a large number of people believe that America was flawed from its conception.

Part III of IV (see Part I and Part II).

Posted in: Books.
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Mind your Ps and Qs

Jan 1st, 2012
by Ted Swanson.
62 comments

Common to all cultures, disgust and taboo seem universal. What are the origins of curse words, vulgar language, dress codes, obscenity and censorship in general?

You might think some boring old men were sitting around one day and arbitrarily decided to ruin everyone’s good time for kicks. But it actually stems from a deep and sacred understanding of the metaphysical nature of reality.

For centuries philosophers have wondered if the world exists beyond our sensory perception. Perhaps life is a grand simulation orchestrated by a diabolical genius who resides in some netherworld. How do we know that reality is not only what we see, taste, smell, or feel?

The answer is so obvious that we don’t even notice it. We prove it to ourselves, time and time again, by noticing that our senses deceive us. When you put a stick in the water, it looks like the stick is bent, but it is not. When you cover something up, like the body with clothing, you know what is underneath even though you don’t see it.

The moon that is reflected in the water is not the real moon. The world that we see, taste, smell and feel is an illusion. A sacred illusion. A veil. Paradoxically, by proving the sensible world to be an illusion, by casting doubt on our own sensory perception, we also prove the firm substance of reality beyond the senses.

Although there is a reality beyond the senses, it cannot be completely and utterly understood in words or human terms. We can explain how water bends light to create the illusion of the stick, but we cannot explain why. It is ultimately a mystery. Since we ourselves are ultimately an aspect of reality, we cannot have the privileged perspective to view reality from outside of reality.

This realization shows up in many cultures across the ages. Human vocabulary is centered on the tangible, sensible world and the closest we can come to putting reality-beyond-the-senses into words is metaphor. Think of the Metaphor of the Sun, the Analogy of the Divided Line, or the Allegory of the Cave in The Republic. Here is a metaphor in Advaita Vedanta:

In the moonless night, a rope lying on the ground may be mistaken for a snake. We know that the rope alone is real, not the snake. However, the failure to perceive the rope gives rise to the false perception of the snake. Once the darkness is removed, the rope alone remains; the snake disappears.

Illusion is not the opposite of reality. It is a more subtle reality which enwraps the primary one and hides it. When we describe or explain how the world works, we are actually describing or explaining the illusion of reality, not reality itself.

So here is the paradox: by trying to expose reality-beyond-the-senses in terms of sensible description or rational explanations we introduce the concept that there is no reality beyond the senses. We have confused or conflated the question of “how?” with the question of “why?”

If you can imagine complete ignorance as total darkness, we can also imagine complete understanding as total blinding light. In both cases, we are incapable of seeing. This is why in the Allegory of The Cave, the adventurer has to go back into the cave, and his eyes have to adjust from light to darkness.

It is not enough to discover pure truth. The intangible, blinding light of truth must be turned into something beautiful, tangible and bearable for everyday use. Much like appearance hides the real reality, we cover the body to reflect this metaphysical truth.

We declare some things taboo or obscene to remind us of the boundary where appearance ends and reality begins. Curse words and vulgar behavior are cultural manifestations to remind us that there are limits and boundaries. Did you ever keep a secret with a friend? Have you ever winked at a girl? It’s in bad taste to blurt out the obvious. Some things must be left unsaid. This is the wink and nod of reality.

In order to truly affirm the mystery of life we must not give into the temptation to constantly expose reality. This is the mistake we have made with our intellectual enterprise of “figuring things out,” and “exposing” things. We must respect the boundaries of what we cannot perceive or know.

The people who think absolutely everything must be exposed probably enjoy telling kids that there is no Santa Claus. There is no Santa, there is no God, life is meaningless, give up on meaning itself!

We should be more concerned with what kind of culture/community/civilization we want to manifest. We can either be poets or we can be pornographers, we can be vulgarians or we can be virtuosos. A noble enterprise might be to render life a little more mysterious than we think it is.

It seems we have done away with all mystery and now we are disillusioned. Maybe we should stop trying to “expose” reality and instead honor it for the delightful mystery that it is.

Posted in: Socialization.
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Redistribution

Dec 31st, 2011
by Brett Stevens.
25 comments

If you want to win votes, propose wealth redistribution. There are always few rich, and few truly happy people, so to the lonely and discontented voter your words will be like a balm for the soul.

Except of course that much like heroin, “once is not enough.” Soon more is needed, and the one-time-fix of borrowing money from those evil rich people becomes a daily deed. And then the money dries up.

Right now, America and Europe are divided between two forces. The pre-1789 rightists want natural selection, where the best rise. The post-1789 leftists want wealth redistribution, so that everyone is accepted regardless of their competence, character or contributions.

When you feel the world has ground you down and done you wrong, you want a golden ticket to acceptance and so this appeals to you. Instead of being forced to prove yourself and make yourself join, society is obligated to bring you into its fold.

For 222 years, and increasingly in the 65 years since the end of the second world war, liberalism has dominated political discourse. Even our conservatives are shades of liberal. But discontent has been growing.

Even before the most recent economic crash, people have been expressing discontent about the direction in which the USA has been going. These are not all the alienated types, either. They’re well-adjusted, successful and distrust our future.

Our own FBI mentioned corruption as a huge problem. Illegal immigration gutted the hospital system in the south. Government ballooned in size, as did regulations, creating a huge protected class of people — a new elite — who benefited from knowing the Byzantine bends of those legal mazes.

The liberals won’t admit it, but this is what wealth redistribution looks like.

We take wealth from the independent and competent, and give it to a group of people we are “morally” obligated to support. The result is a net loss for the competent, and a win for the incompetent, who increase their rate of reproduction to match.

If we want to live in a first-world nation again, we should consider a new kind of wealth redistribution: take it from our new elites, and transfer it to those who actually contribute something and actually are competent.

This method has worked since the dawn of time. Whatever you have, take the best and make more of it, and the next generation will be even better. It is Darwinism in its purest form.

We can do this easily in America:

  • Bust unions. Unions are monopolies that force employers to subsidize the incompetent along with the competent. Quality declines as aresult.
  • Remove welfare. Job insurance is no problem. But paying people to stay unemployed creates a permanent parasite caste.
  • Erase anti-discrimination. HUD, Affirmative action, and equal opportunity “seem” good because they are well-intentioned. Instead they multiply cost and strengthen government.
  • Obliterate non-essentials. Our government should have one mission: protect and nurture the nation through its most competent. The anti-drug programs, drug counseling, child protection, health education, diversity, etc. are a drain on that purpose and should be removed.

These are not radical changes, but they all have a single purpose: create a system like nature where the best rise to the top, take more resources than others, and use those resources to make society more productive as a whole.

Our mania for wealth redistribution started with the birth of liberalism in the French Revolution in 1789. The result has been that we pay the incompetent to be incompetent, and take that money from the competent, who then are not able to fix our problems for us.

Instead we should look toward creating truly great outcomes that we could not envision before, and create a new elite based on that ability. Such an action is forward-looking and increases the well-being of everyone.

If we change course now, and re-distribute wealth to those who will do great things with it, we stand a chance of not following other civilizations down the sad path to third-world status. That’s not popular yet, but as we see the grim alternative, it’s growing on us.

Posted in: Politics.
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