Modern life is hell.
It is the best kind of hell because it is invisible. On the surface, it appears to be a land of plenty. Underneath, none of that plenty can help us resist its emptiness.
In Dante’s Inferno, each type of wrongdoer received a customized level of hell. In each case, the punishment was based on life serving back their excesses as tortures.
However, all levels of hell had a theme, which was frustration. To be able to indulge in all the powers and excesses of the material world, and yet be powerless against that which you really need to conquer.
People in the modern time do not know themselves much at all. At first it appears that this is because they are constantly distracted with garbage, and this is true.
However, they are distracted by choice, in order to avoid looking too deeply into the parts of themselves they feel they cannot control.
The ego, and the social functions of a human being — these are really mirrors of one another — they feel they can control these. But depth of emotion, insight into the nature of the world? That terrifies them.
As a result, being in hell is a mystery to them. They can’t recognize a difference. The result is neurosis: their body sends signals to run, escape and hide, but the “rational” part of their brain thinks in money, products, and freedoms.
If we look past the world of strictly what is tangible and start thinking of life as an experience, we can see how modern society has made itself hell:
- No values. There is no overall sense of quality or moral good, other than ideological objectives, which distill down to different forms of radical altruistic egalitarianism.
- Quantity over quality. So that all must participate, we reduce the rare and exceptional, and replace it with learning by rote, success by participation, value by conformity and other non-quality assessments.
- Ugly. We call our design utilitarian, but what makes more sense is to call it administrative. It is not there to make life better. It is there to minimize complaints by being so average that none can complain without appearing to be putting on airs.
- Individualistic. Each person by the nature of being equal now needs to prove themselves. They compete on needless tasks, become egomaniacs for no purpose, and attire and adorn themselves with “unique” combinations of hobbies, clothing and personal drama in order to make themselves seem important.
- Conformist. The price of individualism is conformity; if anyone in a crowd is not an individualist, all individualists are threatened, because that non-individualist might invoke some principle of reality larger than the individual. All chase the same trends, memes, crazes, manias, and images. What they see in movies, they buy.
- Anti-exceptionalism. Utilitarian society is designed to accommodate the broadest swath of average, not the exceptional. As a result, it takes from the exceptional and redistributes to the average as a means of hobbling the exceptional so that everyone else feels satisfied at their own level of performance. It’s a peanut gallery, lynch mob, hive-mind and circular reasoning apparatus that exists only to justify itself.
- Idiots rule. To support egalitarianism and also a hierarchy of popularity and income, societies generate tests to find the “best.” Since these are egalitarian, they are not based on actual ability. The result is lots of zampolit style people who master details and know the right political dogma, but cannot adapt to new stimulus and thus are terrible leaders.
There are many more. This article however exists as an introduction to the hell we have made of modern society, and its goal is to suggest alternate possibilities rather than debunk directly any one failing.
In other words, we have finite time. We are wasting it on the mediocre so that everyone can be included. Why not get rid of the excess and parasitic inclusiveness, and instead do something beautiful an good?
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Modernity is hell because we were given the choice, and most of us preferred the easy lie to the ambiguous path to the truth. Now we pay with the fire that consumes our souls and instructs us to keep shopping, watching TV and bombing Iran.
If I may put it as broadly as possible, the things that matter most are the big things. The ultimate things. The big picture.
This explains why the humanking’s survival doesn’t matter: it is a tiny part of the Universe.
Nobody would ever notice a fly sitting on a big picture puked and then died.
If I may put it as shortly as possible, a grain of matter doesn’t matter.
But who can say one frame of reference is more valid than another? From my own RF, whether I survive or not is a BFD.
That’s exactly the point: nobody can prove one RF is more valid. Here you have arrived to an simple truth:
Nothing is more important than anything.
These are the things that guide us in our whole lives and deliver to our souls a sense of satisfaction.
Of course they are the most important.
We can always learn to shop, download MP3s, watch TV and crunk dance later.
Orientation.
All apprentice humans should attend this session.
Basic training for being what you will become.
The start-line is where you line up to head for the finish line.
Without it, there is no race.
Period.
Modern life is hell, ancient life is heaven.
Little child is angel, fat adult is demon.
what would you have to contribute to the discussion, oh slinky one? :)
If serious, it is a big mistake to consider the ancient life to be better than the modern life. It was hell also. The percentage of noble people wasn’t much higher than today. We have to be be realistic.
agreed!
Great point.
Everywhere you go, you have to take yourself with you.
I saw an interesting documentary, yesterday, about the F-22 Raptor. The test pilot said something I found really fascinating, as he described his first takeoff in the aircraft:
“There I was, thinking to myself: the only part of this thing that has ever flown before, is me” :)
He forgot about the headset, clothes, and other personal stuff.
It’s good to encounter someone, finally, who is even weirder than me.
It cannot be: you are unbeatable.
I consider discussion as a threat of comments closely related to the original article.
Few people are commenting on the ideas articulated in the post; if somebody does, these comments are doomed for eternal loneliness.
Usually, comments are coming in an associative mode, triggered by the words used in the article and involving lots of stories from personal experience unrelated to the topic.
How one can contribute to the discussion, if descussion fails to start or is deliberately sabotaged?
Thread, not threat
That’s a relief.
See? We are all a bit different, and sometimes very different indeed: I live my whole life in ‘associative mode’. But I don’t expect anybody else to do that.
Okay this works for me as construct but I am really not fond of the idea of fitting in to a larger principle of reality. What does that look like?
As long as you are not dealing with reality, you will be at odds with it.
This is a major problem with city life: reality is nowhere to be seen.
Even city dwellers moving out of the city bring their inability to see reality with them.
What is the larger principle of reality?
There isn’t one. Reality is reality. It is what exists outside of what human minds superimpose over it. It is always there. But most don’t see it. Like God: they don’t believe in it.
You have a garden, with a mature tree in it. You build a shed next to it, severing roots to lay the foundation. They’re just roots, after all. Two years pass and the wind brings down the now-dead tree, onto the shed.
That’s reality. That’s consequences.
You decide to build another shed. You put it beside your other mature tree, severing roots to lay the foundation. It won’t suffer the same fate as the first one; you just got unlucky.
Careful now! You’re leaving reality and constructing a make-believe one.
Two years pass and the wind knocks the tree down, onto your latest shed. What abominably bad luck!
No. That’s reality, and the consequences of your actions.
You could have accepted reality, the first time, and observed the consequences of severing tree roots. But no. In your home-made reality, these things are in no way connected. You preferred to believe in luck…
Be nice to trees. Respect them, and their roots. Put your shed where it will do no harm. The tree continues to grow, and you get to keep your shed.
Amen.
I have been thinking much more about how actions have consequences, and that a big part of reality is the cause and affect nature of things. I realize I am rehashing things said here a million times, but it is becoming very clear to me that most people want to be able to do whatever darn they please, often to feed an egotistic narcissism (though I would say it often masks a deeper self-hatred), and when the consequences roll around for their self-centeredness, they want others to clean up the mess. I mean, it is the whole of our society it seems.
As a side note, don’t get me wrong, I am not perfect. But in observing this I do want to try harder. Also, I think a lot of this egotistical narcissism has come out of a society that has sold itself out. We are in an ego battle with each other, and since such disparate people can never not be at battle in the subtle, often non-verbal ways we all want to stand up the other, I don’t see how it can get better. Welcome to the modern world ;)
Oh well, learn what is really going on, lose the self-hatred, don’t be an arrogant douche, and all those people are no longer your problem. Rise above…
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it :)
The lazy will never bother, no matter how easy it is.
For the alienated white man smack dab in the middle of this “modern hell,” his only personal answer is genuine white Supremacy. It’s particular. It defies the inherent totalitarian impulse found in all “all-inclusive” ideologies (western liberalism, Islam, homosexualism, dykism, etc). It can manifest a powerful voluntary collective. It, by definition, accepts and embraces the most objective standard. It is quite simply radical liberalism’s antithesis.
All moderns are anti-Supremacists. They are euphemistically referred to as “egalitarians,” i.e., ones who “believe” in “equality.” To “believe” in “equality” is to be anti-Supremacy and to “believe” in “equality” in the Western context is to be anti-white Supremacy.
But not even the toughest and most principled conservatives/traditionalists/right-wingers dare be a “white Supremacist.” It is the last and ONLY taboo in a fully liberated society.
And so it is the exact thing that a still conscious white male liberal must become or he descends out of the modern hell and into the real one. It is the logic of the “progress.” The liberal white male who rejects genuine white Supremacy will find a real radical autonomy awaits him upon his total self-annihilation.
The white male liberal either embraces white Supremacy or he will inevitable find “Final Liberation.” Modern society has it planned in exactly that way.
I don’t believe in equality.
I want culture to rule over my people, which requires some degree of commonality in heritage, culture, language, customs and values.
I don’t however think supremacy is a good option. It is better that each population find its own balance and rule itself.
The last taboo in my mind is inequality. The idea that not everyone is right all the time.
I’m with you, Brett. I would like to see the one with the best level of skill, experience and brains be functioning at the best level. I’ve seen white supremacists and found them not to necessarily have that–they’d have to prove it’s about more than a grievance. That’s been my impression anyway. Seems like it would be enough just to take care of your business in the most prudent way possible. And not be hating.
Where did that word ‘hating’ come from?
Did it, perhaps, pop into your head, while commenting on ‘white supremacy’, because somebody else put it there?
It seems, these days, that anything not ostensibly liberal, gets equated with ‘hatred’. Even, sometimes, by those who don’t consider themselves as very liberal.
Or perhaps it is the only way of having something stable for the long run.
Mr. Stevens,
If you don’t believe in “equality” then you are a Supremacist whether you acknowledge or not. More specifically, if you are a white man who does not believe in “equality” then you are a white Supremacist.
If you can think of a third way that allows you to float in between relativism and absolutism ON THIS particular subject, I would love to hear it?
At some point your thoughts will converge into something more absolute or they will remain divergent and the cognitive dissonance will be inevitable.
When you say the last taboo is “inequality,” who makes such a taboo more visible than a genuine Supremacist? The Supremacist is the very model for inequality.
Ms. Colorado,
You have almost certainly never crossed paths with a real white Supremacist. By definition, they are rare.
What you are intimately familiar with are the very self-serving characterizations of the “white supremacist” propagated by the radically liberal media.
What you are actually seeing be portrayed are white degenerates of one sort or another who are then called “white supremacists.” That these white degenerates then gladly embrace and take for themselves the label of “white supremacist” should shock no one who understands the radical liberal mindset.
So when you think of what it means to be a white Supremacist understand that you invoke the radically liberal assertion that it means to be a white degenerate.
A=B.
Supremacy = degeneracy.
I myself have a big issue with the “white supremacist” thing. There are too many knucklehead whites that fly this flag. I’d rather hang with *decent* (and I stress decent) folks different than me that share my same values. I realize you italicized “genuine”, so maybe I just don’t get the genuine aspects of what you speak of. But as far as wanting to align myself with *quality* folks similar to myself, I am okay with that. But as much as I have my own issues, I have no time for trash regardless the flavor.
Eric,
Don’t confuse the white Supremacist with the white degenerate.
If you were ugly and fat and I called you beautiful and athletic, would you reject or embrace my characterization?
If you were a white degenerate and the liberal media called you a white Supremacist, would you reject or embrace the characterization?
How can white supremacy be a ‘personal answer’?
Can a bunch of guys adhering to an ideology be any kind of personal thing?
Being white, I don’t have a problem with white supremacy, if it happens, or happened, to be the status-quo, although it really doesn’t interest me to be a part of any race wishing to be ‘supreme’, whatever that means.
A far better ‘personal answer’ is to sort oneself out so that one is able to survive in spite of whatever the current madness is. This is what I focus on, with notable success.
Everything may change, of course, in double-quick time, but that’s just the way life is.
Crow,
The most odious aspect of “liberalism” is its all-inclusiveness and thus its tyrannical drive to include ALL OF US. “Liberalism” abhors exclusivity and separation. To be outside the fold of “liberalism” is to make things “unequal” and intolerable. “Liberalism” cannot be realized until we are all neatly nestled inside it. Only when we are all “equal” is “Absolute” Liberation finally realized. Even one Supremacist is too many as the very taint of his separation and exclusivity is so great as reverberate all throughout the liberal worldview.
White Supremacy is extremely personal. It has almost no relation to anything else as it is that personally particular. The white Supremacist and the true liberal are like matter and anti-matter. The only thing more free than the radical liberal is the genuine white Supremacist.
I see you put your case well, and eloquently.
I see sense in your assertions.
What I don’t see is why you would label yourself in the way you do. Even if it is true.
The British National Party in the UK is a good example of this.
See them as a group, and they are well-behaved, exceedingly normal humans.
Yet almost everybody has adopted the press/government viewpoint concerning them: they are ‘vile’. Just why this is, is not clear.
What is clear is that some labels are dead ducks. They can never more be used. Even the term ‘conservative’ falls into this category.
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