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What it is to be human, part 1 OK, I said I wouldn’t do this. But, well … you know. This is the first of two posts on an alternative to the politics of spiritual regeneration - always assuming that the reader understands (a) that some systemic replacement for liberalism is necessary, and (b) that the current American empirical offerings lack motive power. The second part will carry forward some of the arguments here and sketch out a model of Mind as a contribution, I hope, to the search for a new and syncretic founding theory.
With these words Madeleine Bunting, the occasionally sensible but mostly Moslem-mad Guardian Woman, signposts the left’s remaining recourse in a world made hostile by neuroscience. Moslem Maddie’s problem, you see, is that she has heard the rumours that the eponymous self of liberal self-authorship fame does not, in fact, exist. “This”, she says, “is the kind of stuff which challenges almost everything you’re used to thinking about yourself.” And about your politics, if you are a radical individualist as she is. She writes:
That’s a rather dramatic way of putting it, of course. The constant flow of affirmations of self are wholly legitimate from an evolutionary standpoint. The illusion of self exists even if self does not, and it is no less a product of evolution for that. Genes for “self-ishness” and self-preservation are privileged for the fitness gain they offer. So, what now for the left? Cue the decampment, perhaps, from the half of the liberal project that pursues the unfettered will into the egalitarian and social democratic half? Well, that may not be necessary. A strange and unnerving synthesis of the two halves, of a self-authorship and a state-mandated compassion that were never entirely reconciled in the past, may just be coming down the turnpike:
This struggle for ideological survival is entirely characteristic of the thinking left, and rather brave given its visceral rejection of sociobiology and its uneasiness with human bio-diversity. But I find it impressive in a way. You understand, I am talking about the struggle, not any theories it may incubate. These guys are only concerned to preserve their own Weltanschauung, which is in error. But give them this: they are facing the empirical enemy’s gun positions and maneuvering to advance on them and capture them. They haven’t worked out their line of attack yet, and doubtless there are many conflicting voices about that. But it won’t be long before someone whose name ends in witz or berg or ski comes forward with a neurologically valid, post-postmodern account of “what it means to be human”. Something about the New Sociological Ego, perhaps. And then we shall see whether such syncretism is doable on the left. Meanwhile, what are we doing? Well, beyond MR not many are contemplating a synthesis of our divide: the empirical and the mythic … truth and beauty … being and becoming, and so on. That is certain. A large majority of those who think at all take one look at evolution <> creationism and conclude that synthesis is superfluous and downright unlawful in the naturalistic sense. Some of the most influential commentators have persuasive critiques of the empirical and do not connect its contributions to “what it is to be human” with revolutionary nationalism. On the contrary, they tell us that our way forward is to dream totemic dreams of the European spirit and the European destiny. These will stir our brothers from their torpor, they say, whereas debating race-realism, the JQ and IQ, and human bio-diversity in general most assuredly never shall. Now, I have not rejected the construction of a racial-national myth. I’ve argued two things. First, that myth - real myth - has not moved the European expansions of the past century and a half. Self-interest has. Second, that if you’re going to have a myth, it’s gotta be b-i-g … big enough, perhaps, to move not just white America but the entire English-speaking half of the European world. Politics do universalise, after all. But here’s the bottom line. A political myth is not a thing in isolation. It is not merely a strategy for a one-time limited goal. That’s not how it works. Ideas hang together. Even in America, where so few seem to understand what sweeping away postmodernity really entails, a partial revolution cannot sustain. If it comes at all the political package must come complete, or it will not be coherent. Mythicisation, when done properly and not messed about with in an ineffectual way, firmly belongs to the continental philosophical tradition. That, in an extreme reactionary form, generally expresses as neo-religious Traditionalism or, secularly, as palingenetic nationalism. The lines of argument which lead to mythicisation have, at their foundation, the same assumptions that underpinned the entire 20th century European revolt against liberal democracy. We are entitled to ask if that is what, as an end-game, we really want. Perhaps it’s only because I lack the power of words to make myth myself, or perhaps it’s because, as CC succinctly puts it, Germans (and Celts) yearn while the English turn to the practicalities, but my answer is that I don’t. Myth-wise and life-wise, I do not want to see nationalists in the English-speaking world binding my people’s fate to the long-shot of a spiritual regeneration … a recycled Furher strategy for the 21st century. Of course, the truly holistic - and, therefore, truly revolutionary - alternative is also a long-shot. As with Maddie’s leftist model of a syncretic long-run intellectual regeneration, it does not exist. Yet. If we at MR fail to distill some basics for a wider take-up it probably never will. But even in its absence, I can still remind myself that an ontological politics has as much primal power as any other. I can believe in the ground beneath my feet and the world my senses, feelings and thought reveal. I can believe in my English blood and English soil because they are real … they are self-evident to me. They are me and they are mine. No totem, no dream is necessary to model or mediate them for me. I know them and love them. I will fight for them, kill for them, die for them, or just be useful to them if that is all that is needed of me. It’s all rock-solid to me, and not that far off a political proposition for a nationalist party. Here are its 14 words: * To re-Europeanise our blood * To reclaim our lands * To take custody of our future It is ironic, given her liberal ambitions, that the new realism of Madeleine Bunting stands in closer proximity to radicalism of this magnitude than Michael O’Meara’s misty and idealistic totemism. That is to say, we really are here to change the neural pathways of the liberalised mind … to re-shape brains … to create mental habits that some might have thought would never be seen again. It will be a long, hard process but it is possible, by God! The next post will venture in that direction. Comments:2
Posted by Captainchaos on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:27 | # Even coming to a holistic conception of what we are is insufficient. Without yearning, the ability to induce yearning, it will lack motive power and therefore be impractical. The great migrations of our people in the last centuries may well have been motivated by self-interest, but it was gradualistic, not the stuff of the induced alacrity with which the German people militarized under the auspices of the Fuhrer myth to pursue the reclamation and expansion of their lands. GT has, as far as I can discern, the technical aspects of system independence which will render activists independent to galvanize their people to survival covered. But what good idea of what one should say to people, once one is independent, to galvanize one’s people to action does he offer? Not much. That is where his project stalls out, and the project of mythicization and/or philosophy begin. 3
Posted by PF on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:41 | # Its difficult to make a rejoinder to such a storied body of thinking - especially granted that we are involving metaphysical issues where the relationship between symbols and what we mean to say becomes slippery [belief in essentialist/ontology] and especially because we are talking about the spread and proliferation of ideologies over time. The new left synthesis and syncretism will no doubt come. One already sees it in the offing - neurobiologists and philosophers who want to integrate the new picture of human society with liberalism’s project. Neuroplasticity becomes the new tabula rasa/homo sovieticus, although thats a very crude and ad hoc refashioning of an idea to simple emotive ends. I believe that european man will craft the myths he needs - and will understand them in the way he needs to, when the time arrives. That is, I disagree with the notion that we can preemptively figure out the spiritual needs of 2050’s whites, and create a coherent vision for them. Some will believe in myths, others not. Sorry if this seems to make your spiritual project less valuable. I think in many ways we can help out and lay the groundwork for them… 4
Posted by Desmond Jones on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 06:19 | # Guessedworker is making the classic mistake of assuming that anything that is the result of evolution must have been the product of specific evolutionary pressures. This dog won’t hunt. Glenn Doman and Carl Delacato developed a program called “patterning” for children with brain injury. They based their program largely upon a belief in neuro-plasticity. The program provides a variety of therapeutic movements conducted by parents and a coterie of volunteers in the hope it will stimulate neurological growth and repair. The results are mixed, at best. 5
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:51 | # CC, what reading material would you recommend to intellectually stoke the process of coming to a holistic conception of what we are? If it’s book-learning you’re after that’s TOQ country. We are Soren’s bleeding edge of the radical right. That’s pretty lucky for me since I am scandalously non-scholastic, and this is about the only place I can get away with it! However ... James and Dasein have already pointed us in the direction of Martin Heidegger, and I’ve got some catching up to do there. Dasein has a strong interest in bringing Heidegger up to date by incorporating Salter. That would replicate to some extent the occasional offerings in mainstream Philosophy of Science that, like Salterism, venture beyond the supposed is/ought gap into moral choices. I’m more interested just in the fact of accomodating the narrow-range purview of genetic interests into a philosophy of being. This would be an important step, if Dasein can make it, and enough in itself for one day. If and when we can see the fruits of that I think we can move on to other substantive matters, and eventually to a serviceable resolution of being <> becoming. Right now, my expectation is that one of its two dynamics - the one that doesn’t include the Divine - will be approached theoretically from the idea of the quality of consciousness. Many months ago I replied to you in another thread that a certain act of attention might provide a way forward, but that I can only theorise at a snail’s pace and need time. I’ll say something more about consciousness in the next post. But the point is that this is new work, and won’t come from book-learning. 6
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:16 | # CC: Even coming to a holistic conception of what we are is insufficient. Holisticism refers to the completeness of the philosophy, which alone grants it the capacity to challenge and replace liberalism, which is another holistic system. Fascism is an holistic system with this potential, but it is not a whole explanation of Man, of course. So there are two different things in your statement, CC. An holistic system which is propounded on a whole explanation of Man is the ultimate system. It will be more stable than any other. Without yearning, the ability to induce yearning, it will lack motive power and therefore be impractical. I agree. Yearning and practicality meet! the induced alacrity with which the German people militarized under the auspices of the Fuhrer myth to pursue the reclamation and expansion of their lands. Yes, and there are questions which arise out of the extraordinary speed with which they did so. I would very much like to know more about the history and the process itself. I’m sure I am not alone. You might consider researching that for us. I support GT. He knows that. The core idea of the self-sufficient American, whether he is a small farmer now or a settler a century and a half ago, is not a myth. There is something deeply northern European in it. Again, I would like to know more. 7
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:58 | # PF, Its difficult to make a rejoinder to such a storied body of thinking - especially granted that we are involving metaphysical issues where the relationship between symbols and what we mean to say becomes slippery [belief in essentialist/ontology] and especially because we are talking about the spread and proliferation of ideologies over time. Yes, there are qualities to some ideas which make them very difficult to communicate. The difficulty is less to do with the ideas, though, than the unevenness of experiences and understanding among people. You might write a sentence a hundred times yet I will always interpret it according to my experiences and understanding - as well as, say, my intellectual pride which might dictate precisely that I will not listen to you (though that affects all categories of communicated thought). Self-referentiality and self-reverentiality - the two barriers to human communication. At best, we move slowly and, like the surf reclaiming the beach, advance by what we already know at some level. Perhaps the re-ordering of that knowledge is “change” to “the neural pathways”. Not that I’m interested in that in any liberal-Frankenstienian sense. I’m happy for the process to remain in the dark, as Nature intends. I believe that european man will craft the myths he needs - and will understand them in the way he needs to, when the time arrives. That would be the normal way, I imagine. Unfortunately, someone else has invented a myth-making machine, and his output will need to lose its power first. Since he will, by his vanity and hatred, move from denigrating Europeans to assigning them their new place in his perfected world, that loss of power is pretty well guaranteed. Or inevitable, as they say. I disagree with the notion that we can preemptively figure out the spiritual needs of 2050’s whites, and create a coherent vision for them. Some will believe in myths, others not. Absolutely. In the thread to “Myth and Great Myth” I commented that Michael O’Meara really needed to address the practicalities of how his mythicisation would be accomplished. The proportion of myth-followers to non-followers may correlate to the proportion of faithists to non-believers. Faithists, of course, include secular believers of all kinds. Somewhere around the 75%, maybe 80%, mark seems about right. Sorry if this seems to make your spiritual project less valuable. Not my project. 8
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:21 | # Desmond, Do you mind if I duck that haymaker? I take the sense of self which we possess to be a product of evolution. That is what I wrote. I have not written that I agree with Ms Bunting’s idea of consciously re-ordering neural pathways. Who is conscious here? I don’t know that she knows. Which pathways is she talking about? Surely not in the part of the brain dealing with motor function, which you are talking about. She is interested in “damaged political morals”. Neural re-ordering in the brain happens all the time - whenever we acquire new data, for instance. But I am not arguing for intentional re-ordering. I am arguing for an unconscious re-ordering occasioned by a nationalist challenge to, and replacement of, liberalism. 9
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:42 | # I know, Fred. I’ve been meaning to tell you that your powerful meme of “race-replacement” - and I believe it is yours - is entering the lexicon of the BNP. Simon Darby is using it regularly. I’ve also seen a couple of Guardianistas using it in a sullen way, but I claim responsibility for that! 10
Posted by Prozium on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:24 | # A few thoughts: http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2009/08/29/myth-aesthetics-realism/ 11
Posted by Prozium on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:33 | # Quick summary: the Left will either suppress the new insights of neuroscience or adapt the facts to fit their preexisting narrative. 12
Posted by Euro on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:38 | # “Quick summary: the Left will either suppress the new insights of neuroscience or adapt the facts to fit their preexisting narrative.” The Left being the Left,e.g. Talmudic,will do both. 13
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:33 | # Proze, I’ve read your piece today. You are not lending yourself sufficiently to the questions at issue ... certainly not if you want to offer criticism. For example, you write:
We are not talking about left vs right. We are taking about human consciousness vs human mechanicity. Then you say:
There is no such animal as “old-fashioned British nationalism”. There is the fascist tradition which began with admirers of Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, which tradition, moderated by National Socialism and Revolutionary Conservatism, amongst others, still informs what, for want of a better name, we can call the anti-liberal right today. There is the old tradition of patriotism in the Conservative Party, though that doesn’t amount to much any more. But there’s nothing else. Unless you know something I don’t. The effort that, over time, will unfold here is not a deception. Its unwelcomeness in certain quarters is based on a misreading, and perhaps on baser motives. 14
Posted by h.kalervo on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:03 | # This is an excellent post, and an excellent site. I only wish this site had some sort of coordination in the posting of articles, so that at most one article would be posted per day, not three per some days and then none in three days, as seems to be the norm now. Perhaps it makes little difference in practice. But casual visitors (like me) may feel a bit overwhelmed by the number of words posted here on some days. 15
Posted by Captainchaos on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 03:05 | #
What do you suspect those motives are, GW? 16
Posted by Captainchaos on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:40 | # I’m not convinced a myth of sufficient power to galvanize enough of our people to accomplish what we wish to be accomplished can be constructed for the reason that those myths which linger with us and have pull were forged in the dimly lit past before empiricism and systematic reasoning were enthroned. But what of the Fuhrer myth? Well yes, there was massive propaganda put behind the propagation of the public perception of Adolf Hitler, the legitimacy of his autocracy, and the especial virtues of the German people. But to what degree was that propaganda a lie? I don’t know that there was much lie in it, and certainly far less than is claimed by anti-White genocidalists and nationalist of another persuasion than German. Regarding the shadowy conspiracy it is hinted is going on at TOQ in which the Johnson/O’Meara clique feigns the openness and fairness which are the staples of democracy as they bide their time to assert themselves as a master caste which will then strip us all of our freedoms and brutalize the untermenschen because that’s the way in which the small men who aspire to be mini-fuhrers most prefer to get their rocks off: get real. I should think a philosophy which can get our people to stand for their survival sans marching in boot and uniform, and being obliged to salute Herr Mini-Fuhrer of the Moment would be preferable to the right thinking. The hint-mongering of conspiracy and low motive is unnecessary, but if it be true, then those accused of aspiring to mini-fuhrerdom can go fuck themselves. But I doubt it’s true. 17
Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:24 | # CC, I don’t know this for sure, but my expectation would be that: 1. The Fuerher myth was done on a highly selective basis. Lebensraum, for example, was not mythicised and neither was German soil in general. They were romanticised. I would hazard a guess that “the especial virtues of the German people” were too, and only the Fuerher was given the full treatment. I think the reason for this is because the German family was a simple fact whereas, say, the New Soviet Man was not. Myth refers to process ... ambition ... yearning. It does not cross over into the world of being, which was one of the points I was making above in my piece above. 2. The mythicisation treatment began at the very beginning. For a long time Hitler was always seen by Germans as the embodiment of some process that was heroic but not embedded in the cold, anti-human ideals of Soviet communism. Quite the contrary. When the myth was sufficiently secure Hitler’s domestic arrangements were permitted to be seen by the German public, but only in the Olympianesque detachment of Berchtesgarten. Is that fair? Where’s Friedrich when you need him? The rest of your comment is a tad strawmannish. You are putting several words in my mouth. The base motives flow less from disagreement about principles than from the desire to maintain intellectual hegemony, that’s all. Perfectly natural and predictable. The present disposition of forces is entirely condign to, if one can use the word at all about people of our political persuasion, the Idealist Establishment. They can very easily put down race-realism and the IQ thing, the JQ and so on, and they frequently do. The supporters of the empirical specialisms cannot lay a glove on them. They are not used to contradiction. 18
Posted by Desmond Jones on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:48 | # If the driving force of, mostly Anglo-Saxon, expansionism was based upon self-interest, then it is logical that self-interest drove pre-war racism and post war anti-racism.
The radicalism and Bolshevism of the era motivated an acceptance of racialism, embodied by Grant and Stoddard’s Nordicism. Stoddard, who coined the term “under Man” viewed the menace of Bolshevism as “incalculable”. Racialism, pre-war, served patriotism and capitalism. Post war it did not. The rise of racial nationalism threatens insurrection, and capital (self-interest), in the same manner, Bolshevism threaten self interest a century ago. South Africa is a prime example. The mass migration of Africans served the interests of capital by providing cheap labour. After WWII, the formation of labour unions and the threat of insurrection, self-interest (capital) embraced racialism because it served their interest, maintaining a pool of cheap labour. 19
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:58 | # Desmond Jones: If the driving force of, mostly Anglo-Saxon, expansionism was based upon self-interest, then it is logical that self-interest drove pre-war racism and post war anti-racism. Individual self-interest (fitness) is not an especially strong component in racial consciousness. That fact is the key to why, under the formative power of an individualistic - and therefore constantly individualising - milieu, it was possible for the purveyors of anti-racism to enforce their strictures. Once it was established, anti-racism became an Establishment. As you have often observed, it offered a means for traitorous souls to increase their fitness. Racialism, pre-war, served patriotism and capitalism. Post war it did not. Anti-racism is anti-nationhood, and serves international capital. Marxism + neoliberalism, you know. 20
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:43 | # Hopeless. Look at the comments to that piece. Proze is fighting a losing battle for anti-intellectualism. It’s ridiculous. If the last three centuries have taught us anything it’s that the power of ideas trumps the power of a conservatism that is instinctual and uninformed by philosophy. Not availing ourselves of that power makes us the equivalent of pacifists poking flowers into the rifle muzzles of an army bent on genocide. As for Jobling, he is a buffoon. As an Englishman and a nationalist I am ashamed for him. He is trying to arrive at his own philo-semitic anti-WNism by selecting a few convenient philosophical concepts as a starting point. At least we are looking down the right end of the barrel, stripping the issue back to the absolute basics of life philosophy and seeking to advance from there. Genuine philosophical enquiry does not result in pre-determined answers, or we could all go home and change the world this afternoon at tea-time. 21
Posted by Prozium on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:28 | # You didn’t respond to my point: in the beginning, the Founders hitched white supremacy to liberal republicanism. America was founded on the basis of highminded principles. This philosophical component of Americanism was later invoked to attack and discredit white supremacy. All that remains of Americanism now is a stripped down universal ideology. Why should White Nationalists repeat the same mistake and set a course down that road again? 22
Posted by Desmond Jones on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:57 | #
Agreed. However, self-interest (capital) embraces it, racial consciousnes, if it serves self-interest.
Pre-WWII racialsim was embraced as a defence against radicalism/Bolshevism because it served capital/self-interest. It was was dropped again as quickly because it no longer served capital. The real racist are an orthodoxy. They believe in the position regardless of self-interest. However, self-interest does not disappear when racism is embraced. It’s a continuum, not a light switch. Self-interest/capital abides racism if it serves self-interest, for example South Africa. Self-interest does not abide racism if it does not serve self-interest/capital. If self-interest is adaptive and evolved then it will always be and will adapt to the circumstances within which it flourishes. 23
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:29 | # The Founders were slave-owners and/or were owned by the spirit of the age, as are all but the very greatest and most creative of men whose lives change epochs. Accordingly, they were licenced by that age to profess the conviction of white supremacy exactly as a very high percentage of white men today are licenced to feel shame about it and reject it in the most violent terms. In psychological terms there is no qualitative difference between the two positions, save that one licence was truthful and the other false. Understand that, ultimately, truth or falsehood is not the point. The point is, Proze, that no man can be free if he is entirely colonised by the age in which he lives - even if the age is better and truer than ours is. If he is only that which he has acquired psychologically during his life, be it true or false, he is nothing. Men who are nothing cannot take control of their lives and cannot act in concert to deliver to their people that special quality of freedom which so uniquely befits the European. The Founders did not do so. Adolf Hitler did not do so, though he came close. This freedom, btw, is the freedom to realise our own collective Nature (the real meaning of all that myth you are so anxious to create). Later all this will be expounded clearly. This isn’t the time. 24
Posted by Desmond Jones on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:52 | # Why are the Founders driven by a “spirit of the age” and not self-interest? 26
Posted by Desmond Jones on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:17 | # If you posit self-interest as a motivator then how can you be owned by the spirit? Why were the Founders owned by the spirit and not those who traveled westward. Were they too not owned by the spirit of Manifest Destiny, certainly of its age? Either it’s self-interest or it’s not. 27
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:42 | # Desmond, drivers are drivers, acquired personality is acquired personality. It is usual for a man to be completely a creature of his times. It is also normal for him to like naked girls or check the sits vacant for a better job. 28
Posted by Captainchaos on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:11 | # The spirit of the times is the acquired construct which asserts high status ideals that individuals pursue to maximize their reproductive fitness. One who is perceived as high status, as defined at a given time, is more likely to be reproductively successful. Yet perhaps what is high status at a given time is unadaptive from the perspective of EGI. 29
Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:32 | # CC, It wouldn’t do any harm, as a general principle, to separate life’s folly from Nature’s imperatives (my next post should clarify that). 30
Posted by Frank on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:35 | # Man is social, so he takes group interests into account at times too - e.g. his corporation, his university, his neighborhood, his town, etc. Group doesn’t always signify genetic group. Man tends to embrace ideologies and other beliefs that are relatively in his group (again not necessarily genetic group) or individual interests. These energies can apparently be channeled as is done in our societies today. 31
Posted by Desmond Jones on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:40 | #
Perhaps EGI is just a prescription that will never get filled unless it serves self-interest. Post a comment:
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Posted by Captainchaos on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:50 | #
GW, what reading material would you recommend to intellectually stoke the process of coming to a holistic conception of what we are?