Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 14 Oct 2020 22:14 | #

It is certainly true that “the pseudo-morality of the pseudo-individual” is a powerful determinant of the present masculine declension, and masculine declension engenders in the female a reductive and de-feminising, hyper-sexualising behavioural response.  Woman as sexual predator flows inexorably from Man as captive of his age and not the master of it, not the driver of it.  And, yes, she will, in turn, be predated upon by opportunist males from out-groups.  That too is inexorable, history’s verdict on male self-estangement in weakness and supinity.

But is the only answer to this for men to model an honour culture, a chivalric rebirth, a Nietzschean life of glory, which would be bound to be susceptible to inauthenticity and thence reductiveness.  So what is the way out?  I suppose that my question, really, is: “What would the life of the mass of men ... men who are not gifted with the masculine existential drama of the “champion” ... be in an age of honour?

As we live in peacetime, when extravagant opportunities for displays of honour are a bit thin on the ground, I find my mind turning to Hollywood make-believe and Serge Leone’s 1968 masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West.  There are two moments at the end of the film which bear on this question.  One is a brief, brilliantly Heideggerian remark by Jason Robards’ character Cheyenne, speaking of Charles Bronson’s nameless hero dubbed by Cheyenne himself “Harmonica”.  “People like that,” he says, “have something inside, something to do with death.”

The remark actually follows on the final duel between Frank and Harmonica.  But before all of this is the scene setting up the duel, in which Frank returns to Sweetwater to settle scores with his nemesis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6gLJ4_sfG8&t=0s&index=14&list=PLxoRA-w6enw07SMc_POPlETspJrdtHFbO

The pacing of the scene, the weight given to every word, every tiny facial gesture, absolutely catches the distinction between champions, men of existential drama, of “an ancient race”, living and dying outside of the world of the scores of labourers working on the railway in the heat and dust just yards away.  But the railway and the life of massification and commodification was advancing by the minute on the last vestiges of the world of champions, and bringing in its wake the great question of how ordinary men, too, may live a decent life by their own hand - perhaps a question American society sought to resolve by gesturing towards a classless society of “the rugged individuals” while men actually became the opposite.

The British mentality was forged over two centuries earlier, in the two English Civil Wars of the mid-17th century.  They also pitted an old world, in this case of tradition, kingly authority and order, against a coming world of modernity, freedom, politics, and change; but the British context was different and included a deep-historical, barely perceived element of Anglo-Saxon unfinished business.  For Britons, the birth of modernity was always tinged with the fact that knightly virtue in the Anglo-Saxon old legend (“the British Matter”) was cut short and made over into the possession of a foreign over-class.  Deliverance from the Norman heel easily morphed into deliverance from all arbitrary power.

A year and a half before Charles Stuart’s beheading, officers and men of the New Model Army (which had just driven the forces of the king out of London, and set up headquarters at Putney) had gathered along with commoners at St Mary’s Church.  They were there to debate the rights of free Englishmen, the meaning of sovereignty and consent, and the future Constitution of England, all which they did over the course of fifteen days from 28th October to 11th November.  They were the very antithesis of a rabble and a wondrous demonstration of the creativity and high-minded principle which abide among the ordinary and unassuming like water in the rocks.

St Mary’s Putney still stands today, hard by the bridge over the river.  Emblazoned on a plaque above the transcept is a single sentence uttered by Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, a Leveller, member of Parliament, and the highest ranking officer present in those fifteen days.  It was the enduring sentiment, and it reads, “For really, I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.”

Would a champion really disavow that sentiment, even though a world which contained him could not contain it, and even though a world which contained it might be susceptible to all manner of decline?  We have yet to solve the problem of that decline, surely that is all?

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 05:52 | #

But is the only answer to this for men to model an honour culture, a chivalric rebirth, a Nietzschean life of glory, which would be bound to be susceptible to inauthenticity and thence reductiveness.  So what is the way out?

For a start, by paying attention to the critical aspects of my analysis that are elided by characterizing it as “Nietzschean”.  Our understanding of the human creation story have advanced quite a bit since the 1800s and even since Heidegger—and therefore our understanding of the human creature.  We are in a much better position to understand our authorship hence authenticity itself.

The work of Kevin MacDonald in “Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition” may not satisfy but this work is as hard as it is critical, and must not be given short-shrift.  MacDonald only touches on the paleolithic and nearly totally ignores the common root culture—“the ancient race” as you might say—that created the 3 primary branches giving rise to Euroman during the bronze age.  The failure to take that “ancient race” more seriously—what created it—is a denial of our authorship hence a denial of authenticity itself.  For instance, MacDonald doesn’t speak to the critical role played by dogs in the hunting of horses thence to the Yamnaya.  And here we have a man whose background in evolutionary psychology is, without question, one of the leading lights since he not only is addressing human biodiversity, but, most critically, the heritable individualism that is so viciously exploited by the State of War in which we find ourselves.

As we live in peacetime, when extravagant opportunities for displays of honour are a bit thin on the ground…

This confusion between war and peace is at the heart of inauthenticity.  In truth, what honor can there be in war?  War is about power, not honor.  Honor is moral territory.  Power is not about morality.  Power may be a fruit of morality, but it is not the end of morality. 

The mockery people make of honor by saying things like “Thank you for your service.” or by awarding “The Congressional Medal of Honor” is a most egregious display of the inauthentic.

Lost in the mists of time are vague notions of authentic warriors being honored, such as the honorific “sire” which, at least, recognized that war’s dysgenics—war’s destruction of our authorship—must be compensated by granting heroic blood passage into the future under the moral authority of the king and the courtship he grants his champions.

But who remembers such an authentic notion of honor in the context of war?  Certainly not the makers of movies like “Once Upon a Time in the West”.

I suppose that my question, really, is: “What would the life of the mass of men ... men who are not gifted with the masculine existential drama of the “champion” ... be in an age of honour?

Every culture has its notions of honor whether it calls it by that name or not.  The moral capacity of humans demands it whether is called “honor” or not and whether that capacity is used or abused.

Likewise, every culture has its notion of what is “fair”, as in “fair and honorable justice”.

It does no good to bury these words let alone their authentic value.  It only does good to unearth that value and we need to dig very deep indeed.  That is what I offered.

Remediating the masculine must start there.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 12:47 | #

I did not characterise your chronology as Nietzschean.  I said of its final modernist consequences in male and female behaviour and personality:

But is the only answer to this for men to model an honour culture, a chivalric rebirth, a Nietzschean life of glory, which would be bound to be susceptible to inauthenticity and thence reductiveness.  So what is the way out?  I suppose that my question, really, is: “What would the life of the mass of men ... men who are not gifted with the masculine existential drama of the “champion” ... be in an age of honour?

So I am feeling for some practical basis on which you think a Western European people can move into what Daniel would term a post-modern dispensation.  If the chronology implies a world in which champions can re-emerge what, morally speaking, does that mean for existence of non-champions?  I’m not sure that you can skirt around Nietzschean morality quite so easily.

On war, certainly these vast disasters begin in the quest for power but they end in the quest for existence, individually and nationally.  War exposes the falsehood of honour (the message of Juenger’s Storm of Steel).  The king’s champion, the highest individual male expression of an honour culture, exists to prevent war, not to fight it.  Does that vivifying role give us a way to envisage an epochal change which respects the life of the mass of ordinary men?  Perhaps, but I will leave the positive speculation to your goodself.

Finally, Once Upon A Time In The West is a perfectly valid comment on the problem of a people in modernity, and as such was regarded in its time as an early example of postmodern film-making.  Compare it with Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, made a quarter of a century later, with its emphasis on individuals in transition from lightness of being to seriousness and understanding, and the gulf which I sense between us, which is the gulf between the historical folkish mind and the redeeming individual, becomes very clear.  My position, of course, is that I distrust the individual as a knowing and fully consequential agent of change.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 17:38 | #

Some of us are searching for a way to move beyond such notions of ‘Nietzschean’, ‘modern’ and ‘post-modern’ to increase our understanding of that which created us thence to an artificial selection regime, a culture, aligned with that authorship.  This is the sentient route to authentic culture. 

In that search we must, inevitably, activate the deeper strata of Being, laid down by our ancestors.  Due to our self-alienation, this comes at an apparently severe price, wreaking havoc with the “rational mind”.  I say “apparently” because self-alienation imposes false valuations.  Purchasing gold with base metal is anything but a severe price—especially when it is our gold to begin with.  This notion of “valuations” will, of course, trigger in those stuck in the 19th century, the Nietzschean “transvaluation” narrative of my position—a difficulty made all the more pernicious by the havoc. 

Perhaps the “post modernist” way out of this trap is to disaggregate the senses of the phrase “king’s champion” as it has been used here vs in the coronation of the British sovereign.  I say “disaggregate” rather than “deconstruct” since mere aggregation is not construction.  There is no structure in mere confusion.

King’s Champion: 
1) (British coronation ritual) The individual who shields the pretender to the throne from challenges to his legitimacy by challenging such challengers to single combat.
2) (an Anglo-Saxon sense used by me previously here) An individual in the king’s comitatus or war party implying a duty to shield the king from harm during war.

The two senses have, in turn, different senses of ‘shielding’.  In the coronation ritual, peacetime obtains—the threat to the king is presumed to be from a gain-saying individual rather than a war party—hence the single combat remedy.  In the deep historic—Anglo-Saxon—sense, the tradition is that during pitched battle, the comitatus was a virtual extension of the king’s body during pitched battle.  Quoting from the much-maligned Tacitus who, nevertheless, does provide us with cross-checked historical truths about the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons:

On the field of battle it is a disgrace to a chief to be surpassed in courage by his followers, and to the followers not to equal the courage of their chief. And to leave a battle alive after their chief has fallen means lifelong infamy and shame. To defend and protect him, and to let him get the credit for their own acts of heroism, are the most solemn obligations of their allegiance. The chiefs fight for victory, the followers for their chief.

The image of a group, acting as one organism, shielding the king’s initiatives of individual valor, emerges from this description.  The king perceives, decides and acts on his own.  His retinue perceive the king’s actions as a primary constraint on their decisions—the king must be protected during pitched battle—and act accordingly.

One situation is peacetime and one situation is wartime. In peace, the contest is between individuals.  In war, the “contest”, such as it is, is between group organisms.

So let’s look at the concept of “shielding” as it pertains to your primary question posed to my line of inquiry when you ask:  “what, morally speaking, does that mean for existence of non-champions?”

Let me turn that question back on you in this manner:

“What, morally speaking, does that mean for existence of ‘kings’?”

And now we have yet another word, the senses of which to disaggregate:  ‘king’

In the ancient sense, the ‘king’ was temporary—a role assumed for the duration of a campaign.  Indeed, of the Anglo-Saxon lands, Wolfram referred to “the kingless West” in “History of the Goths”.  He was using the term “king” in its later sense—not in deeper sense of that which is shielded by his champions _only_ during The State of War and _not_ (necessarily) during The State of Peace. 

This, in turn, introduces another confusion of senses when we use the word “sovereign”.  The essential attribute of “sovereignty” is forceful agency.  As the previous war party image evokes, the king’s perception, decision and action directs that of the group.  In that circumstance the locus of forceful agency is in the king.  The king is the locus of sovereignty during the State of War.  But what of the State of Peace?  WELL, the transition from an occasional State of War to a perpetual State of War—from “the kingless West” to the age of monarchy during JudeoChristianization—should shed light on the roots of the coronation ritual.

In the root culture of Euroman, The State of Peace is one in which each individual sovereign offers his shield to those that exhibit a quality of being that inspires his (or her) protection.  If his shield is accepted, he stands athwart any challenges to the shielded by those that gain-say their value.

GW, your “common man” is shielded by a sovereign in any event but the structure of that relationships is radically different during an age of degeneration:  The Perpetual State of War.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 22:27 | #

“You ask, and then answer, the question: What, morally speaking, does that mean for existence of ‘kings’?”

Very well.  Let us for one moment separate the transition of consciousness from absence to presence and its vitalising effect of identitarian unconcealment (ie, out of alienation and to appropriation) ... let us separate these subtle, creative things from all coarse societal forms, be they bona fide outcomes of that transition, which I think, personally, one might call construction, or outcomes of the estate of alienation, which we might call confusion from whence, of course, comes only more confusion.  In other words, let us not assume at this point that the historical derivation of the kingly warrior, the comitatus honour code, and the king’s champion are gifts of the appropriated European being.  Let us entertain the possibility that these things might only be, in their way, further examples of that alienating declension, which is always with us (or its doleful potential is).

Now, what is it that is unconcealed ... that is affirmed and appropriated in the state of presence?  It is “I” in the sense of Heidegger’s excellent formulation of “the same as itself with itself”, or in the immense inner sense of that which is closest to our particular human essence yet is not that essence.  This is the sovereign, whose symbol is the mere monarch, and the fealty and respect given to the monarch is the symbol of our enduring inner relation to that truer sovereign, which is in all men.  The role of the monarch is service to that truer sovereign in all men.  That role, of course, is only ever lent, regardless of the fact that corrupt men perpetually seize it or attempt to seize it and to own it.  They can never own it, any more than they can own the people.  Confusions which routinely arise on this point are evidence not of some deep sociobiological routine of hierarchy but of confusion itself.

Now we can return to the notion of conscious construction, but we do so from another angle entirely from that which you have employed, in which social forms are not handed down from above to the mass of the people but are handed upward to government.  In at least partial acknowledgement of this “reverse dynamic” Thomas Rainsborough, speaking at Putney St Mary, also said this:

“I think it clear, that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under.”

We are heading in different directions, James.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 17 Oct 2020 05:33 | #

The quote from Thomas Rainsborough is, it seems to me, exactly in the direction I’m heading with Sortocracy.  Please take a few minutes to watch “The Minimalist Rules For Sortocracy”.  Then consider that what I’m talking about in the original post is Sortocracy’s formalized place of ultimate exile—described in a longer video on “The State of Nature”. 

Is it too much to ask that men like myself be placed in exactly such a prison so “that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under.”???

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 22 Feb 2022 04:09 | #

The author of “King of Dogs” and I discuss my (and his) favorite novel:  “Camp 38:  Current Model of Northern European Lifestyle Before Christianity” by Jill von Konen.

Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 14 Mar 2022 17:50 | #

While hilarious on one level, BLOB may want Musk gone.  This reads like someone getting inside Musk’s head—someone close to Musk.  The response by Russia’s space agency’s director to be, in effect, “The King’s Champion” (see above) bears analysis from the framework of Natural Duel.

Putin’s would-be Champion relates to ND in terms of the distinction between Sovereign and Shielded:  These are mutually exclusive social roles.  There can be no “King’s Champions” since, obviously, “Kings” are Sovereigns and can therefore not be Shielded, but it gets worse.

Read what the Space Agency head actually said to Musk:

“You, little devil, are still young,...Compete with me weakling…”

In ND—a mutual hunt in Nature—an older Sovereign, physically weaker but wiser Sovereign in the ways of Nature—may possess a decisive advantage.

The hunting equipment—25cm blade and 15m of strong cordage—entering from opposite sides of a forested area (e.g. The King’s Forest) not logged clean—requires improvisation, strategy, tactics and intimate relationship with the territory under dispute.

But, now, let’s think about _why_ these conditions are principled:

In paleolithic Europe the heritable individualism scattered nuclear families with their domesticated wolf hunting packs: Everyman an Alpha.  The equipment may well have been fabricated by his own hand from local bog iron etc.  That is, of course, after the Bronze Age Collapse when bellows made it practical to avoid tin trade route bottlenecks and their Lords, by refining the far more ubiquitous iron ores.  So iron technology would have enabled resurgence of individualism and ND have evolved to become between scattered iron age nuclear family homesteads.

The scarce resource would have been winter calories in meat.  Stored grain can only go so far in winter for the paleolithic diet: still present and even resurgent as the early European farmers were driven back by not only the Yamnaya, descended from the EHGs but also resurgent WHG genotypes that had been driven back by early European farmers and their collectivist settlements.  So the 25cm blade + 15m of strong cordage is a quite principled choice. 

There is a lot more to say about this topic, and the many travesties derived from ND by civilization, but suffice to say those travesties are like pustulent wounds in the deep psychology of Euroman’s heritable nobility—the puss can be seen dripping from the responses to me here—minds with deep psychological wounds inflicted by those travesties.

Posted by Thorn on Mon, 14 Mar 2022 23:33 | #

“There is a lot more to say about this topic, and the many travesties derived from ND by civilization, but suffice to say those travesties are like pustulent wounds in the deep psychology of Euroman’s heritable nobility—the puss can be seen dripping from the responses to me here—minds with deep psychological wounds inflicted by those travesties.”

James, what do you think Putin would think of your ponderings?

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 15 Mar 2022 17:05 | #

Putin is undoubtedly aware of Marc Antony’s challenging Octavian to unnatural duel and Saddam Hussein’s challenge of George W. Bush to unnatural duel—and the psychological warfare aspect, just as were the makers of the movie Gladiator aware of it.

What identitarians seem totally unable to grasp is the degree to which late stage civilization is nothing but psychological warfare between those with “agency” (which Israeli’s recognize white Westerners now lack)—and that the most advanced armaments are based on highly classified/secret research in mass psychology.  However, Putin, as derived from Soviet KGB—an “intelligence agency”—is far more likely to posess such “agency” than most identitarians may believe.  This is, alone, explains the “Western” hysteria over Putin—scare-quoted “Western” as the true agents operating through Western institutions are not Western.

So I expect Putin, like the rest of those with “agency”, don’t even need to think much about my ponderings—they, and civilization generally, has long-ago incorporated “my” ponderings into their armaments technologies.

Musk, however, is another matter.  I don’t think he’s operating with that much agency (let alone social psychological scientific understanding born of decades of hard-core, classified research)—which is why I suspect his buttons are being pushed by his adversaries.

Posted by Thorn on Tue, 15 Mar 2022 18:04 | #

That’s a spot-on very insightful answer, James. I can’t say I disagree with any of it but there’s one thing I’m a bit unclear on: “the true agents operating through Western institutions are not Western.” I’m guessing you’re referring to duplicitous Jews/tech moguls but mainly globalists of all stripes; those who have no real allegiance to Western institutions.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 15 Mar 2022 19:18 | #

The non-Western agencies involve just about any opportunistic infection opened up by the more highly evolved Jewish virulence which, like HIV converting immune stem cells into agents that further attack the immune system, has attacked civilization after civilization’s immune system, leaving them vulnerable to far more urgent matters as a vast “diversity” of opportunistic ethnies infect the West.  Just one example is the occupation of the West’s information infrastructure by India as a result of Jewish immune suppression.  Probably Jews didn’t want to end up the lackies of India but there they are!

Posted by Thorn on Tue, 15 Mar 2022 20:03 | #

Got it. Thanks.

Posted by Al Ross on Sat, 19 Mar 2022 02:10 | #

Indians don’t want to end up being the lackeys of the United Snakes.

That’s why Modi is buying Russian oil despite frantic admonition from the rapidly decaying and long since Jew - controlled, North Columbian Empire. 

By the same token , Boris Johnson failed to sweet talk the Saudis into helping the ” International Community ” by releasing more production.

The West , having clumsily, and for no domestic cause, occasioned the tentative but surely future - based , pricing of oil in Yuan , must pretend to be insouciant about this interesting new development.

Posted by Thorn on Sat, 19 Mar 2022 23:29 | #

Dovetailing on @ 14

BRICS Is Working, India Purchases 3 million Barrels Russian Crude This Week

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/18/brics-is-working-india-purchases-3-million-barrels-russian-crude-this-week/

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 20 Mar 2022 03:53 | #

Indians don’t want to end up being the lackeys of the United Snakes.

And who can blame them?  Did they have to wage cyberwar on Western Civilization (or whatever you want to call it nowadays) and install their rentiers to avoid being its lackeys?  Perhaps—it most certainly is totally insane and out of our control.