by musonius

I wanted to write this article because I’ve been thinking about this particular subject for a long time, especially since I opted for a world-view that I currently hold. This is not scholarship, a thesis, or a standard theory that I am trying to create; rather, this is just a commentary that I hope to shed light on since it relates to the Modern World as a whole but also because it’s highly reflective of the area I live in. Writing in the form of a commentary allows more freedom of expression and intellectual activity but at the same time it lacks any objective credibility in the eyes of 3rd parties because it doesn’t appeal or point to outside reference points or 1st person sources.  Though I don’t use any sort of references like this in the article I will say that my personal influences are Stoicism, Neoplatonism, Nouvelle Droite, Julius Evola, and other intellectual forces and those influences will manifest themselves in particular ways in this article.

THE BEGINNINGS OF HOSTILITY

Hostility, in a general sense, can be a position, emotion, idea, and view that sets itself in opposition to another position, emotion, idea, and view. The opposition doesn’t necessarily have to be embodied in any entity (human, cat, horse, spider, etc.) but can be inherent within the oppositional view itself; for example:

View A: Abortion is wrong because you’re murdering a fetus that has a soul and has inherent worth.

Opposition to View A: Abortion is not wrong because a fetus is still a part of the woman and the woman should have a right to get rid of a “thing” in her body she doesn’t want. The soul is also “non-existent” and therefore does not have inherent worth.

This is just one of many examples of oppositional views that are inherent in the Cosmos and especially more narrowly in society itself. Every view that is upheld always has an oppositional view that is directly opposite of it. Hostility is the manifestation of that opposition at various levels of intensity and degree. For this example, I am going to use a measurement of this hostility in 3 levels that in a sense corresponds to real world degrees of manifestation but it not necessarily an absolute measurement but just a way to systematize it.

A and B disagree about view C; A is for C and B is against C.

Level 1 manifestation of hostility

A and B disagree about C but still communicate and correspond with one another and they never let C be a subject of discussion between them.

Level 2 manifestation of hostility

A and B disagree about C and in turn stay away from each other and cease all communication and correspondence.

Level 3 manifestation of hostility

A and B disagree about C and in turn look to overpower, submit, eliminate on another. In a sense go to war with one another.

This is the nature of the cosmos itself and this view has many forms and manifestations in the philosophies of the Orient and Occident, Lao Zhu and Heraclitus, respectively, mentions this in their respective philosophies. An opposite is already manifested in relation to every entity before existence itself is actualized. Another example:

A lion seeks to kill a gazelle and the gazelle seeks to prevent its elimination. The lion doesn’t rationalize or seek to systematize why he acts in this manner but it is inherent in his behavior. Hence, it is prior to its existence or else it could never come to manifestation.

OVERCOMING OF HOSTILITY

An entity will seek to overcome hostility by a variety of means; by a dialectic process that involves both oppositional forces that in turn will create a 3rd force, a synthesis; an overpowering and submission of one force by another; a submission of one force to another; and the most fluid of them all, a unification of one force to another because of inherent unity between two forces.  The 1st and 4th means to an overcoming is the process of culture, race, ethnicity, commonalities, and consubstantiality itself. The 2nd and 3rd means is a process of warfare and violence itself; this is the process that is manifested to a high degree in a capitalist society itself.

CAPITALISM AND ITS MANIFESTATION

Capitalism is an economic system which derives from the Enlightenment and in turn informs and influences the participants that live within the system. The Enlightenment posited man as an abstract with inherent universal qualities as the starting point for its manifestation in the temporal world. The universal qualities it seek to impose on man from the start is that man is a self-interested creature that seeks its own good and is endowed with natural reason from the start. Culture and ethnicity to them are just “accidents” and do not have any importance in their conceptions and philosophy. Since Capitalism manifests itself all these presuppositions of man, the participants in Capitalism will manifest these qualities in turn.

The Enlightenment is a falsity from the start because it creates a system out of abstraction and those manifestations that philosophers of the Enlightenment witnessed were ones that were infused by their own system. In fact English society, which a good portion of Enlightenment thought came from, manifested qualities that were pseudo-Capitalistic and Liberal which led to the universal abstraction of these values onto all humans and peoples around the world. The Anglo-Saxons themselves already lived in a culture of small government, individualism, and commerce that “laid the ground” for the Enlightenment itself.  From this chain of causality Capitalism and Liberalism in its various manifestations came into fruition. Hence a “culture”, system, and environment was developed that reflected these qualities and in turn qualified the participants in a mode of operation that corresponds with the environment.

MANIFESTATIONS OF HOSTILITY WITHIN CAPITALIST SOCIETY

In a specific sense, this relates to American society but in a narrower sense, Southern California. The Enlightenment itself, when taken to a logical conclusion, manifests a society where culture, ethnicity, and in extreme forms, race, is seen as a non-factor and that individual gain and supremacy is the ultimate, albeit within a system of boundaries, laws, and other edicts that within themselves are Enlightenment based. Individuals are the real foundation of a capitalistic society and relationships are reduced to contracts, formal alliances, passing gestures, and superficial leanings. In this environment, individuals are “atomized” and the system is only structured by “universal” abstractions, a “culture” of individualism, and a market economy that participants have no choice but to participate in because it’s inherent within the system; alternative systems can be created but that will be for another article. The unifying principles that are not inherent within the system itself will be sought after through other channels: i.e. subcultures, common interests, race, ethnicity, culture, philosophy, etc. These principles will be held by various networks within the larger Capitalistic system and because the market economy itself is based on “competition” between various actors and groups, these differentiated groups and participants will be opposed to one another because of the amplification of “competition”, which is really just a euphemism for warfare. Here is a good example:

Participant A likes Death Metal and hates Rap.

Participant A finds a network of participants that share in his fondness for Death Metal and hatred of rap; this network is Group A.

Participant B likes Rap and hates Death Metal.

Participant B finds a network of participants that share in his fondness for Rap and hatred of Death Metal; this network is Group B.

Group A and Group B live in a town that is part of the Capitalistic system.

The town is not defined by any common, unifying principles (race, ethnicity, culture) that infuse the members of the town.

Group A and Group B are not unified by any principles they both share in.

Group A and Group B are hostile to one another based on the opposition that both groups carry.

In Capitalism, groups, participants, networks, and other entities live in different realities from one another which in turn ceases any unity between these social forces. These “realities” inform, nourish, influence, potentialize the actions and directions of these different social forces. These social forces, because they follow different world-views, can not share in the same reality with one another and because there is no underlying unifying principles between them their will be a level of hostility between them. Liberalism actually seeks to create a unifying system that prevents differentiated social forces to come at war within one another but because Liberalism is qualified by chaos within it’s principles, i.e. individualism, multiculturalism, market competition, distrust of ethnocentric doctrines, etc., chaos has no choice but to manifest itself within reality. Alienation between these two forces creates an environment that is, at different levels, chaotic. Another example:

Group A has a world-view where Concept A is a supreme principle.

Group B has no understanding of Concept A, which in turn is utterly alien to Group B.

Within this alienation of understanding, Group B has no choice but to have an interpretation of Concept A.

Within the interpretation, there is a hostility to Concept A that Group A sees as absurd in turn is opposed to that interpretation.

Since there is no unifying principles (race, ethnicity, culture, religion, philosophy) between these groups then there is opposition between them, which is a result of chaos within the Liberal system where abstractions take precedence over real unity.

This chaos is typical of the Modern World and in a narrower sense to Southern California and it shouldn’t be a surprise for the population why there is so much tension, angst, misrepresentations, misinterpretations, crime, conflict, hostility, and chaos itself in the region. Southern California, as a region,  is not qualified by any transcendental principles which all members look towards; Christianity is manifested in different forms and denominations; Islam is making a presence in the region; a good portion of the population has no transcendental principles or philosophy that they hold onto; alienation is created between these groups, chaos in turn is the underlying principle of this region as a whole.

With many different races, ethnicities, and cultures inhabiting a specific region, all these unified groups are in many different manifestations going to be alien to one another. It can be seen in the tension and nervousness of differentiated participants when they exchange correspondence and communication; their world-views do not correspond to one another. Another example:

Participant A and participant B exchange a monetary transaction at a restaurant.

Participant A believes in world-view C and Participant B believes in world-view D.

C and D will be manifested through various actions and behavioral traits.

Participant A and participant B will interpret these manifestation differently because their world-views do not correspond to one another.

These interpretations will create a sense of confusion and misunderstanding between Participant A and B

A synthesis can occur but because there is many disunities between the participants the synthesis itself will be interpreted differently by the participants. A unified interpretation of the Cosmos, with race, ethnicity, and culture as underlying factors, will mitigate and modify the conflicts that are manifested between participants because the degree of correspondences and manifestations will be able to unify with another and synthesize with one another. Greater degrees of unity and synthesization will be actualized as the commonalities are more in common between participants within any environment that is not marked by chaos but by order.

In this example I will use 4 manifestations of unity as measurements: Race, Ethnicity, Religion, and Taste.

Race will be A

Ethnicity will be B

Religion will be C

Taste will be D

Participants will be E and F

E and F share A,B,C,D=Unity is the greatest

E and F share A,B,C but not D=Unity is great

E and F share A and B but not C and D=Unity is less

E and F share A but not B,C, and D=Unity is lesser

E and F do not share A,B,C,D=Unity is non-existent

If E and F have no unity than synthesis will be non-existent because there is not a unifying system that both participants share and agree on and therefore make oppositional forces contained within an ordered, dialectical process.

The degrees of participation between entities in opposition and unity in the Cosmos is differentiated at greater and lesser levels. By bringing oppositional forces into a unified, integrated world-view with underlying principles that unite participants in the highest degree of manifestation this will allow creative energy, synthetic creations, and many more manifestations to be harnessed and nourished by the participants. By bringing participants into an environment where oppositional forces are given free rein and where chaos is the foundation for the environment then the participants will be in constant opposition through their actions with one another and synthesis and creative power is weakened and in some cases, non-existent.

CONCLUSION

Unity is something that is inherent and something that is sought for and realized through entities with one another. Hostility is the creation of alienation between forces that do not share a unifying principle. Capitalism itself is an environment, system, ideology that infuses hostility between participants because of the underlying principles that make the system itself. By living in an environment where hostility is manifested more abruptly and underlying order is lost then the environment itself manifests chaos and derision within many of the facets. This is the Modern World, this is what I am opposed to.

This article first appeared on the very new blog Inland Empire National Anarchists.  MR readers might be interested in the explanatory note which introduced the blog to the world on October 6th.