WHAT WHAT IS
NEOREACTION
IDEOLOGY, IDEOLOGY, SOCIAL-HISTORICAL SOCIAL -HISTORICAL EVOLUTION, EVOLUTION, AND THE PHENOMENA OF CIVILIZATION
BRYCE LALIBERTE
What is Neoreaction? Ideolog Ideologyy, Social-Historical Social-Historical Evolution, Evolution, and the Phenomena o Civilization
Bryce Laliberte
Dedicated to my riend who introduced me to neoreaction
At the time o this writing, a number o those whom I must acknowledge or their help in craing this essay go by pseudonymous personas. Where this is the case, I have directed my acknowledgement to that persona. My gratitude first and oremost to Amos to Amos & Gromar Gromar , with whom I began writing reactionary philosophy. o Nick B. Steves, or his introducing me to the wider reactionary blogosphere and his patience with my use o his ideas. o Buttercup Dew o My o My Nation Nationalist alist Pony Pony , or his preliminary explanation o nationalism. o Donal Graeme, who always seems to ask the questions I wanted to see asked. And all others I have talked with over email and witter. witter. Te thoughts you inspired were instrumental in putting this together.
C������� Introduction Introduction ......................................... ............................................................... ............................................. ....................................1 .............1 Te Notion Notion o Ideology.......................................... ................................................................ .......................................1 .................1 Singular Dogma, Pluralistic Speculation Specu lation....................................................2 ....................................................2 Te Longer-Run Longer-Run View o History History ........................................ .............................................................. ..........................55 Te Biopolitical Biopolitical Horizon Horizon ......................................................... ..............................................................................6 .....................6 Spiritual Egalitarianism, or We’re All Protestants Now ............................9 Te Case o Libertarianism .......................................... ................................................................. ..............................11 .......11 Society and Nature Nature’’s God .......................................... ................................................................ .................................13 ...........13 Te Wars o Ideology .................................................... ........................................................................... ..............................15 .......15 Te Vagaries o Modernism and Neoreaction Neoreaction.........................................18 .........................................18 Te ime-Preerence ime-Preerence o Patriarchalism Patriarchalism............................................. ....................................................21 .......21 Futurism and the echnologization echnologization o Man ........................................ ............................................24 ....24 Racism and Biopolitics Biopolitics ......................................................... ...............................................................................27 ......................27 Te Values o Capitalism Capitalism .................................................. ........................................................................ ..........................29 ....29 Monarchy, Politics, and Economy .............................................................32 Anarcho-Insti Anarcho-Institutionalis tutionalism m.......................................... ................................................................ .................................35 ...........35 Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism and Ethno-Nationalis Ethno-Nationalism m ....................................... ..............................................38 .......38 radition and the Return o Christendom Christendom ........................................... ...............................................40 ....40 Why Reaction? Why Now? ............................................................. ........................................................................43 ...........43
I����������� History since Christ is the history o Catholicism. You may take that as a theological theologica l proposition i you’d like. In act, I do, but the sentence may be taken in another way. way. As a act o human significance, significanc e, there is no overarching narrative. All narrative is imposed rom without. I there is any such meta-narrative o human history, it must have God as its author. author. o say that history since Christ is the history o Catholicism, it means that I am imposing a narrative. Tere is a theme, there are protagonists and antagonists, certain virtues are praised and certain vices excoriated. Tis narrative is perceived through a lens. It is an ideologized ideologiz ed history, even quasi-conspiratorial. I will show you how to see through this lens, the lens o ideology, and rom within you will see how my account o history is produced by the ideology and intellectual event known as Neoreaction, Neoreaction, or in other parlance, the Dark Enlightenment. I understand many are tentatively dissuaded by my manner o o speaking. My language seems ar too concessionary, relativist, postmodern. I see that, and I can inorm you you it is not. You shall see that there is no worry worry to bask in the subjectivity o ideology, ideology, or this is only to make a vestment the subject puts on, rather than a body the subject takes into himsel. In order to explain the Neoreactionary perspective, you shall have to ollow on an intellectualodyssey, and you shall have to be capable o questioning questi oning assumptions you didn’t didn’t even know you had. Not that you didn’t didn’t know you believed them; but you didn’t know they really are merely are merely assumptions. Te purpose o this text is somewhere between betwee n treatise and maniesto. It is not a summarization summarizati on o neoreaction, though it does summarize a air amount amount o the intellectual trends contained contained therein. It is not a deense o neoreaction, though it does include a number o arguments in its avor. avor. It is not a mere exposition o neoreaction, neoreaction, though a number o analytical tools are described with the purpose o expositing in a systematic manner the ideological composition o neoreaction. I allow mysel my own opinion to guide the overall construction o this essay, with the hope that the ideas contained herein shall guide new currents o discussion and codiy some aspects o the reactionary approach approach to social political issues o society. society. All manner o orms o reasoning are utilized, rom economical to evolutionary to modal. I must warn that this text is certainly certain ly not introductory. Tough it serves as an overview o a number o views developing within neoreaction, this is not written with the purpose o initiating. It is or the initiated, who are already amiliar with thinkers such as Mencius Moldbug and ideas such as patriarchalism. —
T�� N����� �� I������� Te word ‘ideological’ is not usually used to describe one’s own body o belies or social-political attitudes. However, the explanation and deense I give o Neoreaction hinges on my treatment o it as ideology, or it is rom the perspective o an ideology that the operation operation o other ideology may be perceived. All are subject to ideology; those who think they aren’t are simply unaware o the continuity o their belies with the present assentive tradition. Tese individuals individual s are, moreover, all the more preerable preerable or they are constrained by the Noble Lies that make their liestyle arrangement possible. Tey overestimate their resistance to propaganda, propaganda, which makes them the perect targets. Who would you rather try to con, the man overconfident o his ability 1
to see a con, or a man underconfident o his ability? Evolution is a shrewd bitch. She selects on the basis o o naught but cost-effectiveness, cost-effect iveness, the most calculating o managers. managers. Species, employees, employees, ideas, these shall all be selected out i another can shi the control control o the local environment in its avor. avor. So shall my analysis o ideology ideolog y be on the basis o establishing a given idea-species idea-spe cies within its social environment, a vaguely definable orm that may never be ormally understood by its own progenitors which may only be discovered through uncovering the morphology o the idea-species over time. In other words, I shall be applying the principles o evolution to the morphological and cladistics transormation o an ideology over time. My thesis is that an ideological ideologic al core orms the defining principle or principles around which the whole body o individual doctrines that are ever adopted by various v arious social environments environments (societies, (societ ies, elites, governments) may be explained. We note that progressivists o the 21st century are decidedly distinct rom their 20th century orebears, at least i you go down the list examining their respectively stated ends. Tis is no original observation. Yet there remains remains a vaguely definable continuity between the two, such that we yet understand them to stand on the Le side o the political spectrum; even i that is an inadequate description o political perspectives, perspe ctives, it captures a true sentiment. Tese outwardly appearing purposes cover up an almost subconscious value that conditions what policies at a given time may be understood as ‘progressive’ ‘progressive’ and which may not. Te particular particula r set o positions do not seem essential; essential ; some plank x might be replaced and entail no need to change plank y plank y . Indeed, some positions positions held by by the members o that that movement, though they may differentiate between themselves, remain together by mutual dedication to that same evaluative core. Tey may disagree on means, but they’re agreed on the end, even i they couldn’t tell you what that end is. I we knew what that underlying belie were, were, that would explain the tendency o certain theoretically distinct groups to subsist within the same political organizations. It is like their ideologies are members o the same species. Tough there may be distinct sub-populations sub-popu lations within the species that can be traced, traced , they’re all still able to procreate with each other. other. How to explain this observation? A specific ideology ideology may be identified identified with an occult motivation. motivation . Te occult are powers o beings which are hidden, unseen; a phenomena without some explanatory mechanism, a black box technology technolog y. You press the button, your your drink is dispensed. dispense d. You don’t don’t know the specifics o the mechanism, and you don’t don’t need to, or it still gets you where you’re you’re going. Te only person liable to know the mechanism is the repair man, who has the specific task o knowing the specific machine as well as the general end meant to be accomplished. Tere is an analogy analog y here or what I’m I’m doing. Te set o views liberalism , modern conservatism, conservatism , libertarianism, libertarianism , socialism, socialism , comwhich might be contrastingly contrastingly labeled modern liberalism, munism, munism, eminism eminism and and the like are all distinct vehicles o thought, some or which the subjects and ends are completely completely different, even opposed, yet they all subsist under the general body o modernist political philosophies. I will show how they are all members o the same species, even i some o those members wish wish they weren’t. weren’t. You see their subsistence by perceiving the occult motivation, motivation , the ideology, which powers them all in the present age. —
S������� D����, D� ���, P���������� S���������� S���������� How may otherwise contradictory contradictor y political philosophies manage to subsist together? I will borrow rom my own Catholic religion to give an explanation. It is worth holding on to, or or it will also explain what is Neoreaction. Catholicism Catholicism is a dogmatic religion. religion. Tis means there are certain tenets within the Christian tradition which 2
are non-negotiable. Tey are required or belie in order to be a member o the Church. Failure to believe makes one a heretic; ailure to reorm makes one an apostate. An instance o this dogma is the explanation given in the Catechism o the Catholic Church which states that “Man’s aculties make him capable o coming to a knowledge o the existence o a personal God.” 1 What it declares in no uncertain terms is that in theory there must be a successul argument or God’s existence. What it does not tell us is how that argument goes. Indeed, it does not even promise that such a successul successu l argument has yet been craed. Tere is a ormal separation between dogma and dogma and speculation. speculation. Dogma commands assent to a given proposition: speculation specul ation provides reason in avor o that proposition. What does not command assent in this equation is the particular speculation. specul ation. Required Catholics are to believe that a successul argument or God’s God’s existence there must be, Catholics are not required to believe in the success o some particular or even any expressible argument meant to establish such. Te unity o o dogma does not not require specu speculative lative unity. unity. Indeed, I and Tomas Aquinas are both Catholic, but he believes in God’s existence on the account o cosmological arguments, arguments, while I believe on the account o ontological ontological arguments. Tis difference between us makes neither o us any less Catholic, or we are unified in dogmatic belie. With respect to the occult motivation o an ideology, the particular maniestations that ideology concretely takes on are likewise speculatively pluralistic. pluralistic. Tere is, however, however, a key way in which the analogy breaks down. Unlike Catholicism, the ideology o modernism, having no soteriological aim or its adherents, can make cost-benefit expenditures o its members provided such an expenditure helps it to gain or at least retain a larger number o members. Tis may seem nonsense, but i you see that there is a competition going on between ideologies, the ideology that can plan or itsel longer down the road will outlast the other that is predisposed to short-term victories at the cost o long-run extinction. Such a sacrifice serves ser ves as an inoculation. How so? Ultimately, the core o an ideology ideolog y is aesthetic. aestheti c. It is impossible to net all members o a society within the grips o an ideology, so the optimal strategy is to raze what cannot be taken. A polar aesthetic to a given ideology should go to pains to integrate integrate that aesthetic, so that individuals who are innately attracted attracted to that aesthetic will go to that and be satisfied, never seeking beyond b eyond the whitewashed, ultimately obedient political maniestation to something deeper, something that gets beyond the predefined area o dissent. Te ideology can open dialogue with dissenters o orthodoxy, because while the dissenters may be heretics, the end goal is not the salvation o individual souls but the long-term long-term survival o the idea-species. Te dialogue may invite dispute, but it is dispute over an issue that is ultimately inessential. Whoever wins or loses, the ideology wins because both b oth sides have already agreed to its undamental premise, which prevents prevents the ideology rom coming under inspection. As such, though there is an identifiable body o dogma, adherence to those dogmas is not required in order to be a member o that ideology. All that is required is an immutable aith in the occult motivation. We may say that, in respect to the given occult motivation, the heretics are logically logical ly out o bounds. In such a way, way, we might say that, supposing or an instant Catholicism were true, that Protestants are “logically” at a tension with their given belie in the Resurrection o Christ, since they do not ollow through to what else is necessarily entailed by such a act. Modern conservatives conservatives stand as such in respect to modern liberals: modern liberals are, with respect to the occult motivation motivation o modernist ideology, logically orthodox, whilst the modern 1
Catechism o the Catholic Church. Paragraph 35. 3
conservatives are logically heretical. What cannot be tolerated is ideological apostasy. Members who leave and take up a new ideology ideolog y threaten the long-term survival o that ideology. Indeed, contrasting contrasting ideologies seem incapable o existing within the same social sphere. As the ideology itsel gives it a certain tendency o response response that is evolutionarily evolutionarily advantageous, we can be sure that the response it chooses to give is optimally strategic; sub-optimal responses that other ideologies tended to give were selected out. In a certain sense, the logic o evolutionary competitive pressures on ideologies necessitates a limited variety o potentially p otentially successul successul idea-species, due to certain innate, unchanging (or at least permanent enough) conditions the social environment exists under. Likewise, Likewise , the social environment is also subject to some level o determination by innate biological, ecological, economical, and political actors. Influence runs both ways in varying degrees. Tere are many many roads that lead to Rome. Many routes up the mountain. As the ideology is defined by its essential core, the occult motivation, there is no sociological contradiction or a variety o mutually exclusive perspectives to be gathered under the same penumbra. penumbra. Te better adaptive ideology ideology would allow a wide degree o approaches to be successul; too ew successul approaches approaches is discouraging or the long-term survival o the ideology, while too many may discourage the short-term survival with a flood o disjointed political philosophies. Tis gives a perspective on ideology as well as a way o understanding what what we ought to be doing with ideology. Ideology coordinates coordinates the actions o those who hold to it. While it does not choose individual individual winners and losers, which is a merely politi merely political cal matter, matter, that the politics shall be o one flavor is guaranteed by the unquestioned agreement o both sides to undertake their political p olitical euding under the conditions conditions guaranteed by that ideology, ideology, whether this occurs in the halls o academia or the global stage o nuclear superpowers. An ideology is maniest in a superstructure. superstructure . Tis superstructure superstructure is a coalescence o key social institutio institutions ns in society. society. Te present superstructure superstructure is a coordination between the university system, the civil service, and technically “non-governmental organizations” which receive the bulk o their support rom the government and their political direction directi on rom the ormer two institutions. Tis diagnosis has been gone over at length in many other places, so I won’t make any urther arguments to establish this. How does the ideology coordinate its maniestation? It may be compared to social institutions, or it works in much the same way, as a superstructure is to social institutions as social institutions are to the individuals o society. A social institution involves the coordination under a common cause o a number o people. Tis coordination does not require the signaling o all involved individuals between each other, or social institutions are not a cabal. Rather, the organizations arise because o mutual advantage pressed at the ringe o the institution, where you see a greater amount o turnover in newly joining individuals. individu als. o “make your way to the top” o an institution in many instances is to make one’s way to the center so that one’s own movement has much more o an influence over that institution than those individuals at the ringe. You might compare the minimum wage employees o a business to the owners o that business in this way. However, However, the business is also a acet o society, and so perpetuates itsel itsel apart rom the actions o any any o the individuals. Describing the movement o the institution might be compared compared to ideal gas laws. Such laws do not describe the movement o any individual gas particle within a given volume o gas, but they are adequate to describe the average o age o all those individual individu al gas particles taken together. And o course, in order to have have a given volume given volume o gas, it must have a container. container. Te “rules o organization” a particular institution has are just that container. 4
Stronger Stronger rules lend themselves to a stronger stronger institution, institution, and likewise weaker rules lend themselves to a weaker institution. Te ideal strength o strength o an institution depends on how the good o that institution is achieved. A business should be a relatively weak institution, subject to market orces, or the good o the business is achieved by nothing but its its serving the market. A marriage, on the other hand, should should be a relatively relatively strong institution, or its good is served by nothing less than lielong commitment. Society Societ y allowed to organize itsel according to the individuals therein (e.g. analogous to the “ree markets” o economists) tends to make those institutions as strong or weak as they should be, but interventions by an extra-social orce, i.e. violence or the threat thereo, may make those institutions stronger or weaker than they should be. Corporatist socialism socia lism makes select businesses too strong by providing political backing, which is nothing but the promise o extorting capital rom society in the case o a business’s market ailure, ailure, misdirects capital to business ventures which do not ultimately serve the desire o the market. No ault divorce and the legal presumption in avor o wives makes marriage too weak and threatens the possibility o individuals coordinating within that institution or lielong commitment. Te modernist ideology ideology coordinates society society to all ever leward. Tere is a logic to this this movement. movement. First, anything more to the right than the status quo is quo is anathema, untenable by the principles allowed in polite society. So there is no opportunity to be in the game o politics and hope to move rightward. At best, “the “the political right” can bargain to hold to the present status quo a little longer, though with the right’s deeat in the democratic process, moving leward is allowed. And so the process begins again. Te political right may do nothing but drag its eet. o actually actuall y move to the right, it would have to give up the ideology, but this is to give up the system which has been coordinated under the present leward ideology; it is to give up power. Te only answer to the ideologically leward system is to root it out and replace it with an ideologically rightward system. Anything less, such as a political right, only plays into into the house odds. And the house house always wins, in the long run. —
T�� L�����-R�� V��� �� H������ Let us suppose we are are taking an extremely long-run approach. Say, millions o years. Te human race has scarcely been civilized civiliz ed within its own own lietime. Isn’t Isn’t this a bit ambitious? ambitious? Rather overreaching? It is actually actual ly the only way way to win. A staring contest is won by the one who can wait the longest. I we’re in a staring contest, we’ll win i our ideology provides or the longer-run sustainability o human civilizations. We don’t don’t need to win in the next 10, 100, or even 1000 years. I we win even only a million years down the road, we’ll we’ll have won or millions aerward. Te logic o social-historical social -historical evolution dictates it with certainty. As in war, war, what is determined is who is le. But as the only end o ideology ideolog y is to plan or human flourishing, the securing secur ing o human human flourishing in eternity is the end o ideology. As such, the ideology ideolog y that lives the longest may perpetuate itsel ad infinitum without ear o extinction rom a competing ideology. Is it a maniest destiny, destiny, a material dialecticism, dialec ticism, a Whiggish history? Not precisely. Where Hegel Hegel postulated an immanentized Absolute that was present in the concrete institution o the social will, another way o understanding the uture arc o history is by seeing that there is a Nash equilibrium to which all players will eventually eventual ly settle themselves to. Given the conditions o innate human biology and environmental conditions (e.g. not only our planet, but wherever we might get to in the physical physical universe; this is very ver y long run speculation), there is one, and only one, ultimate equilibrium that society may settle itsel to. Tere are multiple multiple intermediate equilibria. equilib ria. But given an infinite amount o time, human society must settle itsel on one one o two endgame potentials. otal extinction, or permanent transcendence. Te idea is to plan 5
on reaching permanent, cosmic transcendence. transce ndence. Tat is why we’re we’re in a staring game, albeit with a lunatic whose finger is resting on the doomsday button. otal extinction extinct ion is not hard to explain. What will be harder to explain is cosmic transcendence. Cosmic transcendence: to transcend the state o cosmic indeterminacy. Shall humans flourish? Shall they overcome the possibility o extinction? Maybe, maybe not. Te question is, what are the prerequisites or humans reaching reaching that equilibrium which, upon being b eing obtained, no urther deviation rom the equilibrium is possible? As a matter o theory theor y, that is the ideal an ideology teaches or society. It is the ethically ethicall y normative content. Tat point may be called calle d the Omega Point. We should commit ourselves to describing the properties o that given society, at least in terms o how they would operate in conjunction with the given conditions it aces. As such, we cannot describe or a given society, since we do not know the material limitations such a society aces and, by extension, the social limitations. limit ations. We do know innate, biological limitations, and that is a start, but the longer-run shall eventually have to coordinate or that. It is not reached out o any necessity, and there is nothing “behind History,” no invisible hands or zeitgeists in this view. What happens is accidental; accidental ; all that is being revealed is how society may reach its end o cosmic transcendence. transcendence. Te longer it takes to get there, the less likely likely it will ever be reached, though it is a certainty certainty that given infinite time, i humanity could last that long, it would eventually be reached. But there is no guarantee o reaching that point, so there is no guarantee o infinite time. Hence the importance o discerning and negotiating now, in the present, so that the longer-run uture may happen sooner. —
T�� B����������� H������ Te thing about permanence: it is impossible impossible in this world. All this talk about cosmic transcendence is potentially all in vain. What we may secure or is the most human flourishing, to live the longest. But there is always the potential or change: the environment will change, politics will change, it could be anything. Ideas change. But they are, compared to innate human biology, less permanent. I the intent is to win on the longer-run longer-run view, view, then we must must invest invest not so much much in society’s ideas, but in in the more more permanent eatures o innate innate biology. ology. Biology holds a level o social determinativeness; determinativeness; ideas that gain traction which are are contrary to the actual survival o the species will be b e selected out, and hopeully it is selected out on a local, rather than global, level. Te determination is imperect, o a statistically statistical ly correlative ashion, but it is a better avenue or social engineering than trying to produce arguments arguments that will satisy each individual student who comes through the door. Why not an ideology or which you’ve you’ve already won beore any argument has been made? But this is to seek to place the seeds o our victory not in rational persuasion, but through “brute” out-economizing o the enemy. enemy. “Brute” it may may seem, but the reality real ity is that this is war. war. Te point is to be le standing, which is to say, that someone is standing. Te critique o modernism modernis m I make comes down to this: it isn’t isn’t shrewd enough. It should be more utilitarian, it should give up all pretenses o deontological spirit. But we haven’t haven’t stopped asking why this ideology rather than another, because the why is in the how. Tis ideology Tis ideology will out-compete out-compete the other, and this because it better sec secures ures human flourishing. As a matter o o means, its occult motivation is at an odds with this, and so it would sacrifice human flourishing on the altar o egalitarianism. 6
Tat is at least one sympathetic deense o modernism which might be rendered without being over-generous. Te claim o some on the right or within neoreaction is that modernism is nihilistic, which explains the perpetual aim o its policies to destroy all that is good and holy and li up all that is bad and anti-social. Hence the motivation to subsidize poverty, pover ty, to penalize success. Tis is not not a sound critique o modernism. Modernism is only accidentally nihilist; it is even a kind o noble nihilism. Te spirit, the occult motivation, o modernism, modernism , is this: egalitarianism. egalitari anism. Some have seen this, and have varyingly embraced or rejected it on that account. Te modernist wishes that all instances o hierarchy hierarchy may be, at least in the theoretical sense, potentially disposable. Any use o hierarchy is justified only because becaus e it does more to increase equality equalit y. Tis has the ironic effect o enabling ostensibly anti-elitist political structures rom within which the logic o egalitarianism really builds into a roth. Te ultimate effect, in the sense o a Nash equilibrium equilibrium in respect o its given political environment, is the seeking aer absolute power. Te purpose o this is not or its power, power, but because, where clearly something less than the ability to enorce with totalitarian discretion is unable to achieve the ends o modernism, modernis m, more power is needed. What in other situations might be the more realistic realistic conclusion, that the increased application o orce will ail to achieve the intended ends, is impossible, since it contradicts the very essence o modernism. Te philosopher Willard Willard van Orman Quine described belies as inhering within a web. Te model o the web o belie is meant to illustrate how just about any any given belie can come to occupy a central place. It denies the implicit supposition o many that every individual’s belies are as important as the topic warrants: ideally, people reason out rom more general principles to more more specific situations. Belies Belie s which are more central are harder to budge, since since budging them requires budging budging all the other belies which they support. Likewise, belies nearer the periphery may be easier to replace, since they don’t pose such an overwhelming threat to the web. But the point o the web web is that it likes its own survival, and as that core, defining center o the web is hardest to budge, it can only be budged in a process that we may as well consider conversion. conversion. But aren’t aren’t some belies more central just by nature? Certain Cert ain belies, it seems, it would be absurd or them occupy the center. However, that it appears as such is only because you are subject to your own web o belie. Tis is as much a model o argumentation as it is a model o psychology. You have to understand understan d that logic and argument is surprisingly weak or establishing conclusions. A neat maxim used by philosophy is that one man’s modus ponens is ponens is another man’s modus tollens. tollens . You can always reverse a conditional argument. You might say something like ‘I God exists, there would be no gratuitous evil; there is gratuitous evil; evil ; thereore God doesn’t doesn’t exist.’ o that it could be replied ‘I agree that, i God exists, there would be no gratuitous evil; but I argue that God does exist, thereore gratuitous evil doe sn’t sn’t exist.’ Te ocus is not the problem o evil, it’s it’s just an example. Whenever you have two states o affairs that are mutually incompatible, such as God’s existence and gratuitous evil, you can always demonstrate in a logically valid ashion that the other isn’t the case by assuming the reality rea lity o the other. Te inconsistency o two or more propositions does not, rom those propositions themselves, tell you which must be rejected to find reality. In other words, what you might have as a belie that does more to motivate other belies might or another be a belie that is motivated more than it motivates. Tis is possible because o the transient up-or-down nature o reasoning. Your argument against the good o o egalitarianism might just be used, or the modernist, to “prove” the incompatibility o one o your premises. Tis is the way in which the modernist is an accidental nihilist. What they would preer is that the egalitarian egalitari an utopia be achievable and, i that isn’t isn’t possible, then so much the worse or or reality. Te occult motivation is at 7
the very core o the modernist web o belie, and that is why modernism is incredibly recalcitrant to certain common sense arguments that seem to pose unsolvable problems or modernism. So we look back on history and the order o civilization tending tending all in one direction. Tis has one o two competing explanations. We know the progressive story. story. Society Societ y is ascending to a higher level o arrangement. But is it called progress because they are progressives, or are they progressives because it is called calle d progress? When did progress become more than mere progression, mere movement , and became a one way process in avor o justice? Neoreaction takes on the competing competing explanation. We are seeing history tend in one direction because bec ause the center cannot hold. A system that is in disrepair will work itsel to even greater disrepair the longer it runs. It tends in one direction because disorder causes disorder. As social stability is clearly not increasing, as the hierarchy which would tend to arise is constantly rustrated and social coordination is ceaselessly disrupted, the progressive explanation seems at odds. —
T�� I���������� C��������� �� C����������� Imagine a gnostic ethic that preached preached the essential immorality immorality o sexual raternization. Such a tradition is suicidal, suicidal , at least with respect to the longevity o its given society. Unless such a society culled cul led its members rom a larger, sexually involved society, it would not persist and beore long nobody would any longer question essential morality o sexual intercourse. intercourse. So we may say there are ideological ideologica l conditions o civilization. Civilization Civilizati on did not happen by accident. Some tribe members membe rs did not just one day decide to settle down, learn to arm, and erect a city. Te city’s city’s occurrence depended on a vital condition condition being met; that o a broad enough ideological sentiment sentiment which increased the possibility o peaceul coexistence between members o the human race larger than the Dunbar Du nbar number. number. Small towns they may have been, but there would be strangers. Humans are to some degree psychologically predisposed to disavor strangers. As such, there must be some rationalization rationalizat ion or an ostensibly individualistic aesthetic that individual takes on in order to make himsel eel comortable in his environment. environment. Te operation o ideology on the micro-social scale like this is but an illustration o a more general phenomenon. Ideologies are important because they allow civilizational progress, so that more elaborate socioeconomic arrangements may perpetuate themselves, to the benefit o the whole population. Even i that rationalization is but a Noble Lie, it is sufficient to the ideology to make the city-state level o civilization work. work. Tat the arrangement benefits the population in the overall sense proves its benefit to human flourishing, and so the ideology is an improvement over the previous, tribalistic ideologies that may have previously been taken on. However, However, note that ideology is not identical to its concrete maniestations: human flourishing is a mark in avor o the occult motivation o the ideology, not necessarily its particular doctrines. Te doctrines may be Noble Lies: the occult motivation motivation is neither true nor alse. It may only only be most advantageous. Tat is the name o o the game. It may not need to be the evolutionary innovation o opposable thumbs that allow civilization to occur, but it would be hard to imagine that unless evolution were to supply a species with the material ability to make and use tools, no matter its intelligence, intelligence, the species would would be unable to achieve civilization. And perhaps this is a needless worry: it may be that evolutionary descent that selects or intelligence intelligence can only occur in the case there is already some preliminary tool-building tool-build ing ability. ability. I don’t don’t care to analyze the particular particul ar case here. Te point is relevant, however, however, i we suppose that ideas are but an extension o physiological capabilities. Tere 8
are ideological conditions o society that must be obtained beore civilization, in higher or lower stages, may ever be achieved. I the Sumerians had held to an essentially tribal ideology, ideology, the hierarchical organizatio organization n o the city-state would’ve never been achievable. I I may develop a thesis here better developed elsewhere, an example o this is the hypothesis that it was the exogamous discipline o Medieval Catholicism in prohibiting, at most times, first cousin marriage (and at times, up to sixth cousin sixth cousin marriage) that allowed the cosmopolitan economic structure o Europe to become the case. Te uniquely exogamous exogamous discipline, discipline, which also orms a kind o eugenic practice, had the effect o limiting the benefits o nepotism while also raising the overall IQ o the society through selective descent. 2 As such, this may be evidence that t hat an ideology which implies a high level o exogamy exogamy is necessary to the kind o economic development which we saw take off in the Middle Ages. Tis is biopolitics; the social consequences o eugenic effects and demographic trends. It is a live question as to whether society would have ever developed past the point o rude imperialism (i.e. the Roman Empire) had not the practice practice o exogamy taken root. Understand that the thesis does not require that any society which achieves a post-Middle Ages level le vel o civilization need have the same exogamous practices: catching catching up is always easier than original development. deve lopment. Te point is that, in order or it to happen in the first place, such a condition must be met, though once having been met, the benefits b enefits gained by that practice may be spread to other societies which might not have that ideological condition. It is also an indication o the kind o open-minded examination that must take place i we are to plan on the devising o a longer-run ideology, an ideology that has the most adaptive advantage or our species, our society, our civilization. Likewise, Likewis e, this may also indicate the openness to abandonment o present civilizational configurations. Civilization is Civilization is not a static marker between barbarism barbar ism and polite society. society. Tere are a vast plurality o levels o civilization which may be achieved, and there may be many more ahead than there are behind us. It is largely impossible or the next stages o civilization to be planned or. It usually requires a shi in ideology beore the mechanisms start start working that launch launch the given society to its next position. Indeed, the variables that affect the overall success o an ideology are so vast that it may really only be b e possible to distinguish them many years on: only a rare genius might see them earlier, as did Kant in his What is Enlightenment? or or Marx in Das Kapital . I will still make an attempt at this task. But in order to see the uture, we shall have to see two other things: where we came rom, and where we’re going. —
S�������� E�������������, �� W�’�� A�� P���������� N�� My thesis here is not unheard o within Neoreactionary circles. Indeed, the proto-neoreactionary ideologue ideolog ue himsel, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, orwards precisely that argument himsel, and so does Mencius Moldbug in his own style. However, the same ground must be tread over, over, and indeed the tools I have been building or ideological analysis analysis will provide crucial insights. insights. Tis will provide an ideological ideological context in which Neoreaction is initially discovered, developed, and finally embraced. But beore the discovery, the context. Te Protestant Formation began in 1517 when Luther nailed the 95 Teses to the door o the church in Wittenberg. I call it a Formation specifically because it was an entirely entirely unique body that arose in response to the 2 Tis is the hypothesis o the one and only hbd*chick. 9
Catholic Church; it has no material continuity, no matter i it may pretend to, and is ideologically discontinuous with the Church as begun by the Apostles. Tese I consider plain acts. I may be able to reconcile mysel to them because I am a Catholic, not a ProtesProtestant, and naturally naturall y Protestants will protest, as is their nature. Tat isn’t isn’t my ocus, so let it go or now. now. Te rise o Protestantism stands in need o an ideological ideologica l explanation. For 1500 years, no matter what heresy, heresy, schism, or moral scandal arose, the mass o the public sided with the Catholic Church. Tere was something unique that Luther was caught up in, and though it may not be his own original development, yet was he put at the helm o this movement. movement. Te essence o Protestantism, and the source o its protest, is spiritual egalitarianism. tarianism. Te 95 Teses may be read as a protest against there being spiritual privilege available avail able to some and not available to others. Granted, it may be that “to “to whom much is given much shall be expected, expect ed,”” so spiritual privilege has a concomitant spiritual responsibility; but i that is the case, then it should be that a person may volunteer volunteer himsel to a higher spiritual spiritual calling, rather rather than it being dependent on on God’s God’s plan or the individual within the spiritual hierarchy. hierarchy. It is a kind o o saintly role envy . Tey do not take it on with humility, but wear it as praise. praise. Te same phenomenon occurs with women and eminism, though that will be discussed discusse d later on. In the way that I have diagnosed the particular dogmas o modernism as rationalizations o the occult moti vation that that orms its its essential essential core, so might this spiritual spiritual egalitarianism be understood understood as the core core o Protestantism? estantism? Te issue is not so much the doctrines; those are only ocused upon because it is intellectually intellectually incumbent upon the Protestant to have some reason or abandoning the Church structure rom which it received the entirety o its revealed reveale d corpus, e.g. the Bible, the Christian radition. radition. It would would be a mistake to think that sola fide or fide or sola Scriptura were Scriptura were the reasons or Protestantism: these were just latter rationalizations o the decision to leave the Church, ad hoc justifications that justified, at the least, not coming back even i the entirety o the received corpus cannot be traced outside o the material structure o the Catholic Church. Tat ideological core is egalitarianism. egalitar ianism. Catholicism is, i you’re you’re already acquainted with Neoreaction, the perectly perec tly neoreactionary neoreactionar y religion, save that o course it’ it’s already been around or 2000 years. It is implicitly and essentially tied to its hierarchy, or that hierarchy is the very means by which the radition o Christianity has been received and maintained. At the absolute urthest o its anti-modern speculations, speculations, it even postulates that there may be different levels o Heaven, in which the most Saintly gain the greatest reward, while others lose out on that greater reward. Such a religiously soteriological speculation specu lation is quite apparent given certain sayings o Jesus that obviously imply as much (“to whom much is given…”), but such a notion is clearly anathema to Protestantism, especially in its equilibrium state o Evangelicalism as we find it here in America. Evangelicalism is a veritable anarchy. anarchy. Whatever hierarchy exists occurs only within the church. Interchurch modes o organization, such as conerences, are actively shunned. Tis might seem to tend to a lively bounty o competing doctrines, doctrine s, and indeed it does, save when it comes to the ideological core. No matter an Evangelical’s take on the morality o drinking, communion, birth control, or dating, you can be assured that they shall tend towards the spirit o their age. As an outmoded expression o the modernist ideology, it will assuredly lag behind in assent to the newly defined dogmas o modernism as they are handed down, and in that very being slow to to assent it it defines its Christianness. Christianness. Evangelical Evangelical Christianity Christianity is modernist, modernist, but not that mod modernist. Tis is because the undamental developments developments which took place during the Enlightenment Enlightenment which which saw the abandonment o Protestant Christianity as a vehicle or propagating modernist doctrines are still the case, and so the tension between modernism and more-Protestant orms o Christianity is always apparent rom the outside, at times the only way o perceiving the logic o a given ‘development’ o Christian theology, such as Wolfart Pannenberg, Paul illich, and Karl Barth hoisted upon the world. I you know your 20th century Christian theological developments, it may seem odd o me to include Barth. Aer all, Pannenberg and illich might be defined as the leading progressive developments o Protestant 10
Christianity in the 20th century, but Barth orwarded a thoroughly anti-modern, pro-Scriptural, neo-orthodoxical movement. But Barth isn’t isn’t neoreactionary neoreactionar y. I you’ve you’ve been ollowing along, you know that modernism requires its ostensibly anti-modernist anti-modernist stooges, stooges, someone who will take the rap. Indeed, Barth is just such a useul idiot. All the while presenting presenting himsel (or at least so he has been presented by his advocates) as a response to the materialism and the over-rationalism o modernity, he in act poses no centrally ambivalent theses against modernism. modernis m. In act, he does ar more to attack the tendency o Catholicism towards natural natural theology theolog y, and so insidiously supports the implicit egalitarianism o Protestantism ar more than the overt support o Pannenberg, illich, and other Christian liberals liber als o since the 19th century. Why? Because, i you have “anti-moder “anti-modern n aesthetics,” Barth’s anti-reason preerence or Scriptural exegesis over natural theology seems the most sensible option. Yet, why the preerence or Scriptural exegesis? What explains that? Tere is nothing inherent o Scripture that commands such a central place or itsel within the Christian tradition (interpreted broadly), so such a move must be motivated by some extra-Scriptural extra-Scriptur al rationalization. Tat rationale is obvious: egalitarianism. egalitarianis m. Why else should Barth resist the notion that some within the Christian radition have a privileged place in the definition o doctrine? Teoretically Teoretical ly,, he may accord himsel a higher place due to his greater intelligence and learning, but in principle, and this is the important part, anyone should be able to apply the same background knowledge and reasoning to the same Scripture and come to the same religious conclusions as they ought to. And i they don’t, don’t, then the explanation is Calvinistic predestination. predestin ation. It is not that reason is incapable, but that as Fallen creatures we are incapable o such a perect reason. reas on. Ergo, the worship o a God established by our own reason reason is a worship worship o our own reason. Idolatry. It is the room modern conservatism might make or itsel in ull while still being appropriated appropriated by modernism or its own use. Tat is is the sentiment which defines Protestantism. Tere can be no privileged places place s o theological theologic al development and definition, save that reserved or God and Jesus Himsel. In principle, principle, all that is good and true ought to be able to be understood on its own merits by the honest inquirer o Scripture. Granted, a university education and a background knowledge in the original languages and a level o anthropology anthropology o the culture in which Scripture was written are all helpul or getting at that, but in a undamental sense anyone who seeks out the true meaning o Scripture ought ought to be supplied that just by being a human being. Tere cannot be anyone who just is better at interpreting Scripture or is invested with authority to do so. Te egalitarianism o modernism, as it appears in its dogmatic definitions, is this same sentiment writ large. It is the in principle denial o privileged places in society, an anti-hierarchical prejudice which inevitably crops up when discussing individuals and their relative fitness or un-fitness to take a place within an hierarchical organization. It is always important or the modernist to stress that not o that individual’s essence, but o his accidental qualities, that he plays the role he does. —
T�� C��� �� L������������� Tere is another group that will be bred within an adaptive idea-species. idea-spe cies. Te losers. Tey are a ocal point o sel-selection, i.e. social suicide by political autism. Inevitably, Inevitably, it shall be b e asked what place the ugly ug ly step-sister step-sister o modernism has, so an explanation must be given to this seemingly unique case. Te ailure o modernist libertarianism is as this: rejecting the essentiality o hierarchy and believing in the essentiality o equality, their hopelessly optimistic picture shall not be achieved simply because the people it 11
would be populated by don’t don’t exist. However, However, this is where my my thesis o the ideological conditions o civilization may play a positive role. I must offer offer an explanation and deense o my anarchism, so I shall. Not all societies societi es may achieve an anarchistic socioeconomic arrangement. Some may be doomed to having their best be achieved through colonial effort, some might enjoy monarchist traditions. Certainly, Certai nly, no society should avor democracy, democracy, but it is still air to say that societies ormed through a process that distills a ver y uniorm ideological commitment and which integrates a democratic mechanism in a ashion that is least open to economically perverse incentives (e.g. the rich, white, male landowners who colonized North America or are, most preerably, direct descendants thereo) can hold over well without a monarchical arrangement. Anarchism may not be preerable or the simple simple reason that society is not up to it. it. Tis reflects a kind o reasoning demonstrated above, with the exogamous practices o Christendom Europe. Te people may not be smart enough, they may not properly value purely economic exchanges, they may overavor nepotism and other orms o tribalism, and and so on. I they were at least smart enough to undertake the hypothetical hypothetical game theoretical negotiating Hans-Hermann Hoppe postulates security agencies as doing, anarchy would be possible. But that’s the thing. I they they were smart enough. enough. And as only an overwhelmingly overwhelmingly small portion o o the population understands the benefits o a competitive market in governance, it is air to say the requisite level o intelligence and innate sentiments is not the case. Statists have no morally successul argument or statism, but they are yet right, in the present moment, about how an authoritarian state may achieve the common good through economically coercive means o resource coordination that a lack o such a state might not. It is a practical kind kin d o accuracy, in the sense that, since we don’t at present have the ideological conditions in place to achieve a airer, more just system o governance, we shall have to cynically give the people something, someth ing, at least until they won’t. won’t. My ear is that such a burden, as it inhibits the growth o society, may endanger the potential growth o those ideological conditions that would ound the possibility o an anarchist society. Te patient may expire i he does not get another dose o heroin, but that is no argument in the drug’s drug’s avor. avor. Wreak havoc very careully. careu lly. Tat is why I might in the present give my support to monarchy, though the process o social-historical evolution will eventually prove me right on this point. What exactly is this “essential “essentiality ity o hierarchy?” Te essentiality is a matter o social coordination. Conflict is costly, so a structure which reduces conflict, as a chain o command would or organizing large-scale coordination with high numbers o individual actors, has a benefit over those organizations which would attempt to achieve the same coordination while also not invoking a chain o command to supersede any individual actor’s tor’s separate will. Some such hierarchy inevitably occurs, then, as it out-competes those other organizations that either try to use a de-incentivized hierarchical structure or ails to have a structure at all. For a given society under the same social conditions, different hierarchies may have different advantages. Which proves the most advantageous is unable to be known ahead o time, as it involves the process o coordinating a vast number o actors in real time; in other words, a market mechanism is required in order to see what the ideal hierarchies are. Apart rom that market mechanism, and insoar as its operation is disrupted, distortions hold, so different hierarchies hierarchies arise. Te libertarian is on to something when he points points out that, in a perect market, modern governments would not exist, since they tend to hold their place in society due to the creation o distortions which at once is its job and gives it a job to do. A perect market is unable to be achieved, at least under present social conditions. So a government will tend to eke out its its own existence, being a theoretically theoretica lly suboptimal arrangement arrangement or a practically sub-optimal sub-optimal people. p eople. In a sense, then, the caliber o society must be greater i it is to achieve greater social knowledge, at least where that knowledge is concerned with optimal means o the distribution o all orms o capital. capital. Ironic 12
or not, but a more stable social structure tends to allow the coordination o structures which increase and reinorce that stability. In a structure which is less stable, there may be no reedom to increase or reinorce its stability. Tat is a problem or the libertarian libert arian anarchist, since he is effectively calling or a sentimentally non-market oriented people to become market oriented. Te libertarian libertar ian’’s reflex to let the market solve the problem is only gained through the maturity o relaxing the authoritarian reflex to take control or onesel, to abide by sovereignty and reduce uncertainty or onesel at the expense o everyone else’s else’s certainty. A more mature society, at a higher level o civilization, has ewer prisoner’s dilemmas. —
S������ ��� N�����’� G�� My critique o libertarianism never requires the concept o nature, nature , or the concept is a poor one within society. As a matter o material possibility, any any number o o possible socioeconomic arrangements is possible. Te question we are seeking to answer is to only a certain degree how society works. works . What is more important is which society do we want ? o that it is answered, the society with the greatest level o stability. Tis is not economic or market stability. Te stability I speak o is compatible with market movements, changing actuated preerences, and so on. Stability is not economic stagnation. Rather, this sort o stability is a precondition to increasing economic coordination, or every instability upsets actual or potential economic coordination. Higher degrees o potential economic coordination allow or the ormation o more complex complex socioeconomic socioe conomic arrangements. More complex socioeconomic arrangements are are incentivized because they lead to a greater degree o preerences being met. However, However, complexity is delicate, as it involves a greater number o intermediate goals that must must be met. As we know rom engineering, simplicity is preerred preerred because ewer moving parts means less possibility o breaking down. Some goals require a great complexity o intermediate goals. As those intermediate goals involve in the most significant sense the exchange o o social capital, where even using time to negotiate that exchange is a cost, a highly assimilated culture with strong social roles and institutions has an advantage over a less assimilated culture with weak social roles and institutions because it reduces transaction costs, allowing the greater possibility o an individual exchange, and by extension a greater number o just such coordinated exchanges. Kydland and Prescott, two economists with gleaming modernist credentials, penned an argument to the eect that discretionary policies by the Federal Reserve increased economic economic uncertainty. uncertainty. 3 By extension, this meant that ewer successul economic exchanges took place, which entails ewer actuated preerences. Te logic is very simple. I a bank manager is looking to make loans, an interest rate which might be changed suddenly poses a risk. All risks are cost. Tereore, Tereore, the Federal Reserve ought ought to have as static static a monetary policy as possible, since this imposes smaller risks on the market. But the very ver y existence o the Federal Reserve is in order to make such discretionary, discretionary, destabilizing operations. operations. I the ideal purpose was to do nothing, it could just be done with. Keeping Keeping it around would be the equivalent o aiming a loaded gun at you, all the while insisting that I have no intentions o shooting you with it. Te only logical conclusion is that the politicians keep it around with the intent o distorting the markets when it is politically convenient, and that could very well disadvantage the hypothetical bank manager. Monetary policy, I note, is only one o many other orms o policy modern states engage in. A discretionary government is an essentially destabilizing destabiliz ing orce. You cannot pass new legislation without 3 Kydland, Finn E. and Prescott, Edward C. Rules Rather than Discretion: Te Inconsistency o Optimal Plans. Plans. Te Journal o Political Economy, Volume 85, Issue 3 (June 1977), p. 473-492. 13
changing the means o potential income. Indeed, even the possibility o new legislation is socially social ly destabilizing. Te greatest amount amount o stability would require no government or exactly that reason. Its superfluity would mean higher costs than any benefit it obtains, though naturally this can’t be observed due to its nature o distorting market pressures or its own own benefit. In other words, were the natural state state o society to obtain, the state should have no room to exist. Nature is at least an absence o intervention by what is alien. Te government, defined by its monopoly o coercion, is alien to all other interactions o society which are otherwise void o that coercion, and so the introduction o coercion to a non-coercive exchange undermines the spirit o the exchange. Yet it is also the nature o the government to intervene. How to understand this th is state o affairs? nature is in use. We might compare the nature o a thing to nature) . It A distinct sense o nature is to what happens (in nature). is the nature o a human body to live, yet it is also natural when it is afflicted by disease. Tese are the two distinct senses in use. Te first sense sense is normative, normative, in that there is the ollowing o a prescribed order. Te second sense is incidental , in that it occurs irrelevant o order. What makes a social order natural in the normative sense? We can get at answering that question with another. What do nature and the internet have to do with each other? A technology such as the internet enables a distinctly different differe nt optimal socioeconomic arrangement than i there were no internet. We can’t can’t say the difference between those thos e two is that one is “natural” “natural” and the other is not. As such, there is no one and only natural arrangement o society. Rather, there are a number o natural arrangements, and it depends on what orm is available. It is much like saying there are a plurality o natures, natures, since aer are all there are cats and dogs, and there are cat natures and dog natures. Ten what is about an arrangement o society that makes it “natural” in the first place? Te natural arrangement o society is that which is conducive to human flourishing. Flourishing is not strictly identical to only the perpetuation o o the species, but also the virtue o the individuals therein. We should not, in looking at the matter o virtue, concern concer n ourselves with the mass o the public. public. Te mass o the public is malleable by what social expectations are are set or it rom above. Te virtue we are interested interested in is the virtue o the Potent; Potent; by this is meant not not politically politically powerul powerul , but those individuals with the greatest potential or social influence. Freedom entails greater responsibility than servitude, servitud e, or a servant’s servant’s only responsibility is to serve his master’s will; a ree master is responsible not only or his own, but or deciding his own will. Te will o the Potent is virtuous or it is the will o a higher mind, which is beyond the understanding o the mass. As God was made to reply to Job, Job, so will the Potent be unable to explain their reasons to the mass. It is not that there is a lack o reason, but that the reason transcends what the vulgar are capable o understanding. Tis o course assumes the moral virtue o the potent in society, since it would also be their responsibility to lead. I explain this not as an an ideal, but as a reality. reality. Already it is the case tha thatt an ideological superstructure superstructure is in place, which supplies its own reasons or being and are reasons which transcend the grasp o the mass. It is only those who could perceive the flow o power who could ormulate reasons or their being invested with power, or they see how it acts and what it may achieve in society. societ y. What they suppose or themselves is supposed or society as well. Given that this is the reality, reality, the ideal o power would be sustainable, or a power that sustains itsel over the longer-run depends on the sustaining o society over the longer-run. Te good o the Potent is understood understoo d in this way. way. A power which “sustains” “sustains” itsel by extractive means, viz. the destruction destr uction o society in its own avor, much as a glazier might “sustain” himsel by smashing the windows o a town, is not sustainable at all, and must eventually end in collapse, i not the annihilation, o the Potent along with the society. 14
Natural society, then, is ideological lie. lie. An ideology which tends to supplant supplant itsel and otherwise commit suicide is unnatural; it is contrary to the nature o society which is to provide provide or human flourishing. A healthy relationship relationship between society and those who guide it would have both be benefited, a mutually advantageous advantageous exchange exchange between the superstructure and the institutions institutions which individuals individuals are embedded in. A healthy symbiosis, rather than a destructive parasitism. parasitism . Modernism is unnatural in that it is a parasite on the good o society, gaining its ground on the broken institutions o society. —
T�� W��� �� I������� 1776 will, many generations rom this point, be considered the year that the Wars Wars o Ideolog Ideologyy began. Such an age may be near its end or its beginning, there is no means or us to tell. Te American empire is at once a territory gained through only the most ormal conquering and also a global consciousness consciousness subject to the most vicious siege. siege. Te American military is occasionally involved involved as well. Te American war o independence is essentially essentially ideological. Decided by an elite privileged in law and education, ostensibly started on the basis o human rights claims, it at once chooses and declares the essential justice o independence. independence . Tis independence independen ce is, however, however, or itsel. It is a transnational sovereignty, appropriated appropriated to itsel or the simple reason that it could. Tere is no sovereign to ear i you are the sovereign. Te global political stage is about jockeying or position at at the top, top, so that at at least whoever has the power to oppose you you is ideologically ideologically aligned and whoever isn’t isn’t can always be summarily done away with. Superstructure Superstru cture is, in other words, the only only sovereign, to which all other institutions are subject. We may say the sovereignty is only presently tenuous; it must become all the more complete as more institutions which otherwise prevent its domination are eroded, and the purposes those institutions otherwise filled are taken over by the superstructural sovereign. sovereign. In this light, the war o 1776 against Britain has the same ideological motivation as the civil war o 1865, though clearly with contrasting political polit ical motivations. But such is the nature o ideology, that it may cra politics as is convenient. convenient. Politics is but a rationalization or an ideology determined long beorehand, and there always multiple rationalizations to choose rom. In this case, while the political aim o o the American revolutionaries was ostensibly independence, independence , independence was shunned as politically irrelevant when it threatened the yet-immature superstructure superstructu re growing at the heart o American society. society. A true political disunification would threaten the sovereign’s aim at reign, and so the Union had to be held together by whatever orces necessary. It was simply a convenience convenience that the South could be portrayed as deending slavery, rather than the political right o independence per se. Tis same ideological opportunism presents itsel when one looks through the motivations America had or entering the Second World World War. War. Te concentration camps which the Nazis Nazis used to exterminate extermin ate the “inerior” were never a reason that FDR intervened, and much like the slavery o the South, such a reason was a con venient narrative narrative that that allowed America America to portray itsel itsel not as an an ideological aggressor aggressor that that sought to remove remove ideological competition by a belligerent orce. Tis is not to overlook the vast crimes o the Nazis. While the Nazis may seem to pose a serious problem or reactionaries, it need only be pointed out that the ideological aim o Germany was twisted by aggressive eugenics policies and an inexplicable anti-Semitism (or so it appears to all who are not anti-Semites, including your humble author, author, and this not to praise or deend the Jews). While reactionaries reactionari es may need to ace the evils committed by the politi the political cal movement movement o o National Socialism, modernists must also ace the evils commitcommit15
ted by the politi the political cal movement movement o o Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-L eninism. Aer all, that America sought to destroy Nazi Germany but not Communist Russia is explained by the ormer’s being ideologically opposed, while the latter was not; it was merely politically political ly opposed. Such is not a very great crime. It even excuses the eradication o a ar greater number o innocents than Hitler ever managed, or at least such mass slaughters were undertaken in the name o modernism, o which communism is but a political variant alongside democratic socialism, as we have here in America. Tis has nothing to do with nationalism. Yet the notion o political sovereignty, political independence, ind ependence, is hand in hand with it. Independence is not or the individual, individua l, but or a society. Te kind o society capable o and requiring independence is a national society. What binds a nation together? One might point to a population tied together by ethnicity or, lacking that, a shared historical accident. But this is only merest words. words. Give a little push, and all these accidental associations associations all by the wayside. What binds a people together together is ideology. ideology. Te actual political structure is is a ormality past that that point. Convince the people people they need a government, and they are less opposed to the government they are stuck with. Aer all, it’s it’s better than anarchy. anarchy. And it may well be. Tere must be an openness to the possibility, possibility, like detailed above, that higher levels le vels o civilization may not be obtainable with just any given set o the prospective members o a society. It may be hard to illustrate how increasing the IQ o everyone in a society by 20 points could open up new economic possibilities, since that would involve not only trying to understand a level o intelligence beyond my own ken but an entire society in which individuals like that exist. But suppose or a moment moment that everyone in society was 20 points lower in IQ. You might wonder about those who are already retarded, and worry at their exceptional retardedness which would result: just assume or the sake o argument an IQ o 50 is the lowest possible intelligence anyone may all to. It should be clear that the possible institutions o society, society, especially where they require heightened complexity o social arrangement and a lower time preerence (I think we may assume that intelligence correlates negatively with time preerence) become impossible to coordinate or. Tis may be taken as a hint o an answer as to the necessity o biopolitics and the means o embracing a human population which will inevitably emerge rom an ideological population which, adopting some rule o organization, allows it to initiate the next highest level o civilization. And so doing, it may be in a position with respect to other societies which have not joined it that it might initiate that next level o civilization or the other societies, or the other societies might be so seriously disadvantaged in respect to the enlightened society/ies that it cannot be cultivated. Ideology is an idea that supersedes nationalism. A Korean Korean does not fight a Korean over nationalism. But a Korean will fight a Korean Korean over ideology. Sometimes it is with a gun, sometimes with a vote. Te political effect is the same. Te ideology remains remains in a eedback loop. All history propels propels it orward, orward, orward, ever orward until it alls off a cliff. All imperections o an ideology ideology in respect to what can be accomplished by that society tend to social destabilization. destabilization. But o course, that very social destabilization destabilization it has caused is uel or the fire, urging the spin down and down until the structure is just materially unable to coordinate at the economic level, the most basic o all conditions o civilization, no matter its level. Tat is, literally, the point when the people o Rome can no longer be given ree bread. Democracy, insoar as it is practically achieved in emphasizing the voice o the people, drenches the people in ideology. We think o Americans who lived through the Cold War War who seriously eared Soviet conspiracies as being over-rightened. But then, we live in an age in which the worst offenses offenses the militant ideological opposition can muster are the murder murder o some civilians. It is the responsibility o the people to Decide What Happens. Tis is an adaptive mechanism o modernism, modernis m, or while it means the effectuation effectuati on o the progresprogression o society towards its egalitarian ideal is slower (contrast the American to the French Revolution), it 16
is surer, surer, since the very idea o the egalitarian ideal is that everyone looks to each other to see whether to go orward. A slippery slope it is, but no one notices because becaus e everyone is looking at each other, not the ground. Te society that slips together, sticks together. At least until it gets to the cliff. Tis even to some extent has a built-in mechanism or getting some others to go urther ahead. Aer all, i x is the current issue, and y and y is is obviously attached, then my means o deciding about x will will imply what I think o y . As there tends to be an early adopter reward in society when it looks back on its achievements (e.g. being an abolitionist in the mid-19th century is thought virtuous than thinking blacks are the equivalents o whites in the late 20th century), this incentivizes the issues issues to keep moving orward. orward. Tere are always always those who insist that “Tis, and not one step urther,” but then they say that every time the issue moves orward. A modern conservative conservat ive is merely one who is one step behind everybody. every body. Aer all, it is at least that, or anathematization. And i you want power (you can even convince yoursel it is better you be in this position than the next guy, which is probably true), you’ll go along with it. Tis is the same reasoning or politicians as well. Tat is the place o the people within the social-historical social-histor ical evolution o ideology. Te ideology must endorse orms o socioeconomic and political arrangement that are both congruent to the occult motivation as well as able to propagate itsel materially in that social structure. A model which is not ultimately sustainable may still reign or a period, until it has exhausted all social capital and societal collapse ollows. ollows. It would be ideal to prevent this beore it occurs, but it is the ear o many that it cannot be avoided. We are committed to the course, and no one is at the helm. Te difference between a politician and an academic is merely one o time preerence. Te academic is content to disseminate his ideas through the university system, knowing the reward shall be a hundredold decades down the road, when his ostensibly controversial propositions have become “nearly everyone’s common sense.” sense.” Te politician hopes to ride that wave; even i he did nothing to generate it, having the politician officially pass it in the halls o Correctness is the sign to the modern conservatives that the issue is settled, it is time or them to take a step leward or to step off. Te proessor plays the tune and the politician dances. Wrapped up in the idea o hierarchy is the idea o institution. institution. What, precisely, precisely, is an institution? in- meaning “in, towards” o compose it etymologically, the root is a verb, “to institute” rom the Latin prefix inand “statuere “statuere”” meaning “to set up.” up.” So we can say that “to institute” means something like “to set up together,” a coming-together o individuals due to common cause. Individuals Individual s with that common cause orm the basis o the organization, with a kind o hierarchy that relates the individuals to each other in the means o coordinating the actions o individuals under the common cause that the institution is put together or. In order or it to truly be a “common cause,” it must be that the individual holds such an end on their own grounds, rather than it being an end enorced by violence or the threat thereo, which we may define as “coercion.” ercion.” Coerced ends cannot constitute institutions, as institutions are ormed on the basis o agreed-upon agreed-up on and mutually willing agreements o coordination between individuals. individua ls. While coercion can establish organizations, these are not institutions per se, as they are not ormed on the basis o common cause and the intrinsic ends o the individuals are opposed to the end o the organization. Te range o preerences individuals hold only vary so much, and within shared ends is the possibility o institutions stitutions established. Tis provides provides the basis or a set o terms to be agreed upon which, though likely to be asymmetric in duty and privilege within the institution, bring both individuals a greater product in bringing about the end that the institution is ounded or. Te unity o action under common cause also provides a principle or describing institutions o themselves, 17
without any any necessary reerence to the particular actions o the individuals individuals therein. So we may speak o amilies and corporate bodies, without having having to describe their t heir actions in terms o the cumulative action o all its constituent individuals. individuals . Te qualities o these descriptions are akin to the way in which ideal gas laws describe the properties o given volumes volumes o gas. Wi Without thout describing describing the actions o particular particles, they still suffice to give context to the notion o “pressure” and “temperature” as an average o the particles particle s together. together. In this way may the institution be described apart rom the constitution, and we see that the institution takes on a lie o its own. Tis means o organization scales up, so that institutions are under the same pressures to orm relations to other institutions in the way that individuals have the incentive to orm institutions. Under common cause, identified as an ideological occult motivation, this produces a superstructural arrangement o society, society, so that an individual’s context is defined not only by those institutions he has the right or privilege o entering, but also the limits on institutions. Ideology is the common cause o institutions that band together; together ; where this prevents mutual exchange, the institutions are in a state o warare with each other, as there remains no external means o resolving resolving inter-institutional dispute. Only one ideology may operate within a society at a time, with adherents o the contrary ideology being persecuted in what ways are available to the institutions that maniest the ideology’s social power. —
T�� V������� V������� �� M�������� ��� �� � N���������� As modernism and neoreaction are ideologically opposed, it isn’t surprising to find a number o contrasts in political philosophy philo sophy as well. What is anathema to modernism neoreaction embraces, such as the justice o discrimination discrimination on the basis o race, the reedom o association, the rights o parents to raise their children, monarchism, limited or eliminated immigration, among a number o other issues. Te arguments made in response to modernism, coming rom a different ideological perspective, likewise dispense with what can only be called deontological de ontological stipulations. As I’ve said beore, the problem with modernism is that it isn’t isn’t utilitarian enough. Te essay up to this point has made very ew reerences to any politically maniest issues, subsisting in the abstract and assuming application o concepts to the present situation. I will now point to the political concerns o neoreaction, which are patriarchalis patriarchalism m, biopolitics, biopolitics, monarchism, monarchism, anarchism, anarchism, Christian traditionalism, traditionalism , ethno-nationalism, ethno-nationalism , uturism, uturism, and capitalism. capitalism. I note that a neoreactionary neoreactionary does not necessarily necessarily embrace all o these, nor does embracing these make one a neoreactionary neoreactionar y. Indeed, a number o these have their modernist equivalents, such as libertarianism is the (ailed) modernist embrace o capitalism. capitalism. Where there are counterpoints, the arguments neoreaction is capable o wielding are superior to the modernist arguments, though o course what is a sound argument within the modernist rame may also b e adopted to the neoreactionary rame. A ‘vagary’ in the ideological sense is the maniestation o the occult motivation. motivation. While the occult motivation motivation may be treated as an ambiguous aesthetic that stands without intrinsic justification (though I see others may differ on this point with justice), the vagaries which result o the ideology ideolog y are the measure o its success. A vagary is likewise not not a political policy, policy, but an attitude attitude in regards regards to the ormulation ormulation o policies which which determines what policies shall be given support on the condition o one’s evaluation o the mechanical operations o those policies. Occult intent ought to be measured, or what one explains o their own motivation, as the very notion o o occult motivation motivation is meant meant to overcome overcome,, is vague and and unhelpul. How to measure these vagarvagaries?
18
ime preerence is the notion o the willingness o an individual or group to put off present consumption in avor o uture greater consumption. Higher time preerence avors the present more over the uture, while lower time preerence avors the uture over the present. present. It is impossible or a person to have absolutely null time preerence, as it is impossible to put off a modicum o present consumption in order merely to stay alive. Given equal opportunity to indulge, an individual with higher time preerence may at first enjoy greater consumption, but because the individual with lower time preerence puts off present consumption in order to in vest that capital capital in structures that enable greater greater production production (e.g. skills, skills, technology), he he shall eventually eventually pass up the ormer in consumption. Te most significant difference between poverty and prosperity comes down to time preerence. Prosperity helps to enable lower time preerence, while poverty may make it difficult to exhibit a lower time preerence simply due to the lack o available capital that might be accumulated in the first place. Hence, there may be “cycles “cycles o poverty,” and thus the importance o avoiding avoiding societal societa l stagnation. Vagaries which increase consumption in the present are less preerable to vagaries that lower consumption in avor o investment. However, However, the putting off o present consumption can only be afforded by a more-thanbaseline level o prosperity, so the overall lowering o time preerence is itsel the abstract principle by which higher levels o civilization can be reached, and explains why one cannot skip certain stages except by the intervention o civilizations that have already achieved those levels o themselves. Ultimately neoreaction may be justified contra modernism due to its acilitation o lower civilizational time preerences. Abstractly, the neoreactionary neoreactionar y aesthetic entails a preerence or perpetuity, perpe tuity, while modernism entails a preerence or immediate gratification. As we shall see below, not only does modernism lead to suboptimal arrangements, it endorses unsustainable models that sees the decline o civilization into barbaristic decadence and the dampening o the West’s light. Te aim o each o the vagaries o neoreaction is to place the respective components o society into their right place within hierarchy. hierarchy. Te conservative virtue o order is is not or its own sake, but so that society may get along in itsel and with others, giving to each group the amount o liberty it is capable o maintaining responsibility or. It is a mistake to give too much liberty to a group ill-disposed to make use o it, in the way that it is irresponsible o a parent to give a child too much reedom in what he shall do each day, how he shall dress and eed himsel, and so on. Te same reasoning as a parent applies applies to his children ollows or distinct groups in society, and makes plain the necessity o the Potent to perceive this order so that it may consciously deend against its eradication. It is when the Potent are not aware o the responsibility that comes with their power that society becomes corrupted, unnatural hierarchies taking place and subverting the respective virtues each group brings to society. How then to assign place within the hierarchy? First, the property which defines the privileges and responsibilities o the hierarchy in a continuum continuum is liberty. Te higher in the hierarchy and the more more influence one exerts over others, the greater the privilege, as one is then subject to ewer restrictions on the basis o group and is afforded greater reedom to determine one’s one’s own values and lie path. Tis likewise brings with it greater responsibilities, as one’s one’s decisions affect not only themselves, but many more people. Te privilege o the least is that their decisions affect very ew, and so the punishments that need be laid on them or disobedience can be much less strict. o whom much much is given, much much shall be expected. expected . o assign places within the superstructural hierarchy o society, liberty ought to be accorded to those groups capable o maintaining it responsibly. Tis means evaluating the competence o respective groups by a theory theor y concerned less with pleasant platitudes but unflinching realism. Te hierarchy is not or or itsel, but or the problem it solves, which is that o social coordination to peaceable, productive activities rather than coercive, destructive policies. We call the ability to accept the maintenance required or liberty moral agency . It is only commonsense to not accord someone liberty who does not possess sufficient moral agency to meet the burdens it imposes. We 19
do not give a child the same liberties as an adult due to this; were they to have the same level o reedom, they would put it to poor and destructive use. I we are to take seriously the question question o where distinct groups groups ought to be placed within the hierarchy, then we must take seriously the matter o the distinct moral agencies each group actually possesses. possesse s. In other words, words, not all groups are equal in administering their own agency, agency, and should have their liberty restricted up to that point they are capable o administering administering that which is le or themselves. Tis gives us two questions; how do we measure moral agency, and how shall liberty be restricted? restr icted? Neither o these questions are easy to answer, and I can only produce an initial speculation, though I am certain it is on the right track. Moral agency o populations can be measured by tendency o success and stability brought about by that group’ group’s own efforts. Without being established by the group itsel, then t hen the group does not prove its merits sufficient or the order order it may otherwise otherwis e possess. For instance, children as a group tend to be very stable, but this not due to their own designs but the order imposed rom without, such as parents, the community, and schooling. Insoar as children ail, much o the blame could be laid with parents and their insufficient imposition o structure in the child’s lie. However, at the same time some space or the exercise o that agency must be allowed, so that the child may develop his own agency in the contexts o the structure he shall grow into (ideally). So much as a group requires the imposition o order by another, that group yet requires reedom o space or sel-determination. sel-determinat ion. Te purpose o order is to direct activity so that the majority majority o the individuals individua ls within that group act beneficially beneficia lly or society. Some amount o ailure will and must be allowed to take place; saving those incapable o caring or themselves only increases their representation in society, heightening overall civilizational time preerence and hindering the process o evolution rom accomplishing what we need it it to accomplish. ime preerence must all over time or civilization; as prosperity increases, low time preerence is enabled. It is an aberration or time preerence to increase as prosperity increases. From this perspective, greater moral agency must be correlated to lower time preerence. Te lesser ability to put off present consumption in avor o later, greater production is the de acto circumscription o moral agency. Te highest moral agency would be able to put off off all comorts o the present, undertaking undertak ing the maximal investment in the best uture. In the Christian worldview where ethical action has a Heavenly Heavenly reward, it is clear to see the essential link between the capability capability or moral jurisprudence and the capability or beneficial activity. Tey are, under a natural law theory o ethics, on a continuum. Te contribution o a group to overall social socia l stability is the group’s group’s possession o moral agency. Te more responsible a group is or social stability, the higher that group’s moral agency and thus the higher in the hierarchy such a group should be. Given that moral agency may be measured by the group’s effects on social stability, it ollows that the means o obtaining or restricting liberty lib erty are coincident. In other words, words, the process o measuring and the process o hierarchical distribution distribut ion are identical. Te ability o a group to rise in the hierarchy proves proves the justice o that group rising in the hierarchy, and likewise the inability o a group to rise proves the justice o that group remaining lower in the hierarchy. Tis analysis assumes society to be ree o orcible redistribution, i.e. the coercive distribution o opportunities offered to one group to another group against the wishes o those who offer the opportunities. Te distribution o opportunity determines the hierarchy, and as such what disrupts the distribution o opportunities disrupts the cohering o hierarchy. As such, all redistribution in the name o any ideological vision, be that egalitarianism egalitar ianism or order, order, can only disrupt stability and push society away rom social equilibrium. Te order we desire will make itsel work and any attempts to “re-equalize” rom a previously disrupted order will only prevent the equitable order rom occurring. 20
Allowed to arrange itsel, civilization over time should tend to incentivize ever-lower time preerences, and this due to its being the aim o natural institutions within a natural hierarchy. As we explore the vagaries o neoreaction, keep in mind that ultimate coherency is not the point. A consistent political philosophy under a neoreactionary ideology will have something to say about these issues, and will likely tend to give prescriptions in keeping with the spirit o the ollowing analyses, but I can guarantee that an individual’s own views will draw differently on each o these issues. Necessarily so, as it should be obvious that the sections on nationalism, anarchism, monarchism, and capitalism all have some amount o contradiction, assuming one wished to embrace one in its entirety. Te lack o consistency is not an embrace o postmodernism postmoder nism or relativism. It is only that this is a work work o ideological ideologic al analysis, rather than political treatise. Were I to give a political treatise, I would do my best to preserve logic. log ic. But this isn’t; isn’t; it is a charting o a diverse array o views that share an occult motivation, which is that o order . —
T�� T���-P��������� T���-P�������� � �� P������������� P������������� Te willingness and ability to put off present consumption in order to invest in higher uture production is a necessary necessar y component o civilization. What is consumed now cannot be available in the uture. It is impossible to set more aside or present consumption and to have more set aside or the uture. Worse, a society which consumes the stock o capital necessary to maintain the present levels o production must have lower levels o production in the uture. Such is a toxic nihilism that dooms uture generations, and many in my generation are seeing now how our parents and grandparents ate out our own uture. “Eat drink and be merry merr y, or tomorrow tomorrow we die!” was their morality. morality. Tey were nihilists who treated their own genetic legacies as expendable in pursuit o their own pleasures. Tey even passed on their own “wisdom,” “wisdom,” and now the women o my generation are poisoned by a fleeting desire not to take their place in the proud tradition o a amilial posterity, but who seek aer their own material comorts. Patriarchalism is a response to the extremely high time-preerence set into women, which upsets the natural order that sees men providing or material production and women women household production. Such a division o labor allowed or the low time-preerence maniest in estate planning. Instead, eminism has engendered roles in which the majority o women put off having children or ever orming a amily and has taught them to selfishly pursue the benefits o male roles while also dumping the burdens o emale roles on men. Tere is no such thing as “the Patriarchy,” a conspiratorial cabal o men who seek to “keep women down.” Support o a patriarchy is merely the contention that athers ought to rule, and this because they would plan or the longer-run o society. Patriarchalism compared to eminism has low time-preerence. Furthermore, Further more, eminism does not merely have high time-preerence, it has a time-preerence above the level o sustainability, which must lead to social degeneration, degener ation, decay, decay, and destabilization. Such a conclusion is the inescapable result o women trying to take on male roles and not taking on the noble emale roles o wiely duties and motherhood. Tey are no longer in the role o building civilization, but eating it out without planning or a uture beyond their own materialistic materialisti c lives. Woman is the womb womb o civilization, but i she will not fill this role, and men by nature cannot, then civilization civilization shall ail to be borne. Our approach is overtly anti-modern, at least insoar as modern methodology tends towards flair or the arbitrary over the principled. principled. Te eminist methodology methodology may be succinctly described as the assumption that women are better than men, and so where men succeed over women, it must be due to some unair bias 21
which systematically systematical ly avors men. Te arguments offered by eminist may take the line o reasoning that “Men and women are equal, equal things shouldn’t have these differences, there are these differences, these differences must be explained by something external, extern al,”” but in reality that is only a rationalization. Feminism has role envy, but it would be more apt to call it male privilege envy privilege envy.. Feminists have no been described as a male role envy, envy o men who work the jobs that are unpleasant and dangerous, they only have an envy or the privileges men have bought at the cost o o taking on the roles women would preer not to. What burdens men ace are not yearned aer by women, and requently what burdens that come with being a woman are redistributed to men. Te incentivizing o women to take on male roles, and the likewise dis-incentivizing o men to pursue those roles (at least i it would disavor women were they to), must produce disastrous consequences or civilization. As this particular particul ar area o neoreaction is a concentration concentration o mine, I will attempt to be brie in outlining how eminism is a ailure mode. Te ideological issue o civilization comes comes to this: certain ideas allow society to thrive, and some ideas do not. I we continue with a social-ideological social-ideol ogical analysis, in terms o o evolutionary selection or memeplexes that condition the distribution o resources in society, we are le with a very keen social-historical argument against eminism. eminism. Whereas eminism eminism explains the virtual entirety o all civilizations civilizations being patriarchal as simple conspiratorial accident, the patriarchalist suggests that patriarchy is a key ingredient apart rom which civilization civilizat ion ails. Such is a much more satisying explanation explan ation or this element o history than the eminist as it does not depend upon a statistically improbable distribution distribut ion o ideology ideolog y. Civilization and patriarchy have an almost identical beginning in time, so ar as we can tell by history, and no eminist societies have le their mark on history. Is that a coincidence? Patriarchy, Patriarchy, even certain elements o misogyny, misogyny, may have have an as-yet unrecognized wisdom. Te subordination o women under men, i it is good or society, is good or both men and women. women. It is a structure which optimizes or the perpetuation perpetu ation o society. Feminism, with its penchant or instilling into more intelligent women the notion that they must pursue higher education and proessional careers, and that children are optional, tends to have lower rates o o reproduction amongst these intellectually advantaged advanta ged women. Tis produces a negative correlation o IQ and procreation, with the result that high intelligence in women is selected out by the evolutionary pressures o eminism. Rather than leave a lasting genetic legacy, the pursuit o a crude nihilism is preached to women. Tis with the high inheritance o intelligence, and uture generations are le with a lower average IQ than their parents. It is dehumanizing and removes the individual rom rom history and, by extension, the society. A woman should not be praised or material material success, succe ss, or her calling is much more noble and important. Tis may be why no “eminist” societies have been ound until now. Nearer to equilibrium with nature, and thus more under pressure to remain strict to optimal social structures, what societies abandoned or strayed rom the patriarchal patriarchal arrangement arrangement would have been swily overtaken by other societies. Te literal enslavement o a people by another nation may have been the result o women reusing to submit or men reusing to dominate. Civilization Civilizat ion requires a sufficiently low time preerence. ribalism, ribal ism, which involves a mean existence o hand to mouth has an inordinately high time preerence. preerence. I not enough people are willing to put off off present consumption in order to seek aer greater uture gains, then capital accumulation dwindles; i not enough capital is available, greater amounts o production are impossible. Higher levels o civilization can only be reached reached by the lowering o time preerence preerence.. Te key question or whether an ideological ideological vagary is beneficial and natural is whether it operates to establish institutions that lower time preerence. Tose vagaries which dissolve institutions heighten time preerence, diminishing the accumulation o capital and by extension the ability o a society to sustain its present level o material production. 22
Patriarchy may be described not only as the rule o men over women, and their dominating certain spheres such that emale entrance is precluded, but also the rule o athers. A ather by nature is intent on seeing to it that his children are well-off, and as such he has a low time preerence by necessity in order not primarily or his own gain, but or his own children’ children’s gain. Tis sees the coalescence coal escence not only o strong amilial institutions, but the lowering o time preerences as the patriarchal ather, in his rule over the distribution o the amily’s own material property but its cohering traditions, sees to it that a lasting legacy is prepared or. Where eminism obviates any ocus on the uture, patriarchy throws the present ar into the uture. Such a lowering o time preerences may be required considering the incredible changes that will be wrought by new technologies, as will be more extensively detailed below. Why man rule over woman, and not the other way around? around? Tis has to do with the evolutionary evolutionar y advantages which are individually distributed distribute d to men and women on the basis o their procreative procreative contribution. From the perspective o evolutionary descent, women women are ar more valuable than men due to the relative expense o the womb and the relative cheapness o o sperm. A man who dies is more more easily replaced than a woman would be. One woman may produce produce one child every 9 months, while a man could potentially produce produce multiple children a day. day. In the tribal environment where social equilibrium is only just above material sustenance, it is a much better strategy to risk your men in those situations where someone must be risked, and keep women relatively sae at home. home. Evolutionarily, this results in distinct biologies and psychologies between men and women, as those which align with the strategy o risking men comparatively more than women will outcompete those that do not. Men should rule because o this. Te same reasons which make it advantageous or men to have innately lower risk-aversion than women make it advantageous to arrange society such that women are sae under subordination and men are exposed to the dangers o the world. Studies show that women are are ar more successul than men at reproducing. aken as distributions, the distribution distr ibution o success or men is much flatter than women. Men rule society because be cause there are more o them at the heights o success, but this comes at the cost o many more men who ail. Women, though they are less likely li kely to be ound at the heights o success, are also much less likely to ail. Women are the average sex, men the exceptional sex. A return to traditional amily models mode ls is only obvious in light o this. Te claim is not that women are unable to compete in the workplace, but that the opportunity cost is too great. A woman in the workplace is giving up ar more to be there than a man, and indeed much is also lost or men as a result. Fewer women who are interested in marrying and having children means that many men, o whom the majority are innately interested in finding a wie and starting a amily, must go without. Already it is natural or a minority o men to succeed in reproducing, to limit the supply o women and degrade the quality o that product by subjecting these women to the unregulated pursuit o their hypergamic imperative is to push society towards a dangerous disequilibrium. disequilibrium. I men are not to be rewarded by their material material virtue with social benefits, why should they strive? In a society such as ours, it is all too easy to get by without producing any any great amount. Production and innovation shall all precipitously when the majority o men realize that women have abandoned them. Te eminizing o society cannot be recommended. It is simply an unsustainable socioeconomic arrangement. Te virtues o both sexes are tapped into by patriarchy, patriarchy, while eminism pits them against each other. It disrupts the natural complementarity afforded by this natural division o the species which evolution has otherwise otherw ise co-opted to take advantage o the economic division o labor. labor. Men and women are are innately specialized cialize d to different roles, and their respective gender roles and social expectations should reflect that. o work against that specialization does not merely return us to a borderline o equality, but pushes social product below the levels o profit profit necessary to perpetuate civilization. civili zation. Patriarchy is not merely an advantage or society, it is an essential part. Lose it, and society dissolves. Feminism cannot afford society a sufficiently low time preerence. 23
F������� ��� ��� T��������������� �� M�� Te essence o technology is means. means. As technology technology will become ever more crucial to new orms orms o human human living, the blurring o the line between b etween an individual and the technology which allows that individual his particular existence leads also to the blurring o human end with with technological means. means. echnology shis the benefits and costs o certain actions, and inasmuch as it dampens the consequences o certain actions and introduces new consequences consequences elsewhere, we shall see the rise o new social behaviors predicated on the emergence o those technologies. Te most apt illustration o this in the 20 th century is the Pill. Te Pill, an oral oral contraceptive that prevents the possibility o conception through sexual intercourse, is an essential technological component o the modern archetypal woman. Where you find that modern woman, you find the Pill. Te modern woman is inseparable rom the Pill. Her behavior is not merely influenced by it, it, her behavior requires it. Te power to prevent conception opens new horizons in intersexual relations, such that women may now reely copulate with any man they eel attracted to, and men may reasonably expect no burden to arise o their own sexual pursuits. Given the lustul natures o men and women, the lowering o the risk allows what is otherwise a prohibitively risky behavior to become commonplace and expected. Te beasts o nature are unleashed, and it seems oolish to suggest, considering what was said above in the section on patriarchy, that the sexual revolution was a liberation, rather than a great catastrophe which has played itsel out over these decades decade s since the introduction o this new technology. Te cost o commitment-ree sexual sexua l intercourse in previous eras was a dam which held back a river which now threatens to sweep away much that had been gained by centuries o o careul social coordination. coordination. Indeed, Pope Paul Paul VI, in an encyclical concerning the morality o contraception, warned that: Responsible men can become more deeply convinced o the truth o the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue i they reflect on the consequences o o methods and plans or artificial birth control. Let them first consider consider how easily easily this this course o o action could could open wide the way way or marital marital infidelity infidelity and and a general general lowering o moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be ully aware o human human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy or them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause or alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use o contraceptive methods may orget the the reverence reverence due to a woman, woman, and, disregar disregarding ding her her physical physical and emotion emotional al equilibriu equilibrium, m, reduce her to being a mere instrument or the satisaction o his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection. 4 Whether or not one agrees with Catholicism on the morality o contraception, one must agree as to the social effects we are now witness to, including that prototypically Kantian concern over the person being made an instrument; technological technological augmentation augmentation o the t he body must be warned against when it instrumentalizes or the good o another at the expense o the person’ person’s own due. Such threatens the cohesion o civilization as a whole. Te moral o the story is not that technology technolog y is an inevitable inevitabl e threat to the flourishing o mankind. Rather, the moral is this: technology changes man. Biopolitically Biopolitical ly,, the result o widespread contraceptive use will tend towards its social abolishment, as those who are born are no longer the products o sex which the parents would’ve preerred not to result result in children. A sheer desire or children shall be selected selecte d or, or, and those in society who find themselves without that desire now have at their hands the tools o their demographic suicide. Evolution Evolution is shrewd. Society aer the allout will be better b etter off without without these individuals, since they threaten threaten its very vitality, its very ount o lie. 4 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae. Vitae . Paragraph 17. 24
Every great technological technological shi offers the allure o pleasurable genetic genetic cessation. cessation. Tose who partake ail to have a amilial legacy. Te internet is a similar evolutionary trap, decreasing the cost o validation validat ion but increasing the cost o actual procreative coordination. Te lesson o technology rom these examples is that incorporating technology into one’s being makes one a means, and those who make themselves a means ail to have an end. Tose without an end do not pass on their dispositions, dispositions, genetic and otherwise. echnology at once culls the socially eeble and offers an increase o coordination; the spool winds tighter, ewer are able to carry on under its pressure. Why, Why, then, may it seem as though this uture history is so long in the making? Prosperity has a downside, in that it may cover up ailure. An organization with lots o capital to spare may continue its operation long past the point o profitable sustainability, giving an appearance o health, until it collapses when the last is spent and no returns are incumbent. echnology echnolog y increases reedom, and as always reedom requires greater responsibility. How then do I mean that technology is prosperity, i that technology technolog y is something like the Pill? Te Pill itsel has virtually no redeeming qualities, rom the moral and social-historical social-historical perspective, save to remove remove rom our midst those who cannot appreciate the possibility o a genetic legacy. However, However, the Pill is but a species o a more general power that humans have developed, which is the power to alter the human body’s own chemistry chemistr y. Now that we may, may, or instance, artificially produce and inject injec t insulin, diabetes diabete s is no longer a atal disease. Psychological deects deec ts that were the result o chemical imbalances may now be corrected or. Te same may be said o nuclear nuclear fission. With it, we may power cities or destroy cities. Such a path lies open or all new technologies. technologies. What are the technologies o the uture? It may be unwise to make a prediction as to what precisely those shall be, and what their definite social effects may be. Science fiction already goes over innumerable innumerable instances o macro-scale social changes wrought by the introduction o new technologies, technologies, be they terrestrial or not. It is inevitable that more technologies shall shal l be introduced in human history, and some will be used or devastating devast ating or highly coordinating effect. Te question is how individuals, in response to these technologies, choose to select themselves, either or genetic legacy or materialistic nihilism. May not the same be said o the Roman Empire, i we may consider the high political coordination it enjoyed at its height as a orm o technology? Some chose the path o materialistic nihilism, nihil ism, having ew or no children and leaving all o society to that group which proclaimed the good o amilial duty, the Church. Following social collapses wrought by technology and any other dark ages, the Church shall by its nature be le to pick up the pieces and put society back ba ck together again. O course, she won’t won’t receive praise or this, and those who are apt to materialistic nihilism will always see her as standing in the way o the progress they desire, while those in the world who do not envy the ate o the t he nihilists, which is o course nothingness, nothingness, the smiting rom history itsel in all lasting orms, shall always at least b e allied to her holy mission. Te meek shall inherit the earth, e arth, and the amilial will inherit the uture. In the ace o the t he great risk that technology poses to the perpetuity p erpetuity o the human species, some might seriously contend that it would be an overall benefit to prohibit and ban the development o new technologies. While such an advocate could reely coness that technology, properly handled, rees the potential o mankind to yet-unseen horizons, horiz ons, it is too great a risk or us to undertake undert ake responsibly. Perhaps certain ar-away colonies o humanity could be allowed to develop new technology, in order that ill effects are insulated rom humanity in general, but a base strain o humanity must be kept sae lest all are made extinct. extinct . Tis is “pessi“pessi25
mistic uturism,” which does not tend to have much representation among the uturist strains. Such an argument cannot be lightly disposed o. As mentioned above, the ocus o neoreaction is on the longer-run. Over a long enough timerame, the possibility o humanity’s humanity’s extinction extinct ion at the hands o his technology seems almost inevitable. Already, Already, the arsenal o nuclear weapons weapons possessed by nations, especially when those nations are antagonists, threatens civilization so long as man is stuck on Earth. Te stories o science fiction seem instructive. Doomsday scenarios scenarios and technological ailure ailure modes cannot be ully catalogued, or it seems as though every ever y new technology offers some grave threat. Te problem with such an approach is that, in the attempt to stave off a multiplicity o ailure modes, it initiates its own ailure mode. What but a comprehensive comprehensive government program o orcible orcible ennovation could accomplish this, and what would prevent such a program program rom putting man down the road to a dark age? It is clear that such a program would be harmul. Might it yet be a lesser risk? risk? Better to live in a dark age age than to die in a golden age? age? Tis we are also not not too certain o. o give up the attempt attempt at cosmic transcendence due to cowardice is to give up the purpose o humankind in the Omega Point. Point. It denies the Catholic Catholic aith that God, not man, shall bring on the apocalypse. It is not man’ man’s place to institute armageddon. Whether this is achieved by natural or supernatural catastrophe catast rophe or instrumentally instrumenta lly through man’s man’s own nature is not or us to decide. Man can only live as he shall, and that must be a place among the stars. Contrary to the view that technology is a harbinger o the end, there is also the view common in uturists that ‘the Singularity’ Singularity’ shall be a salvation o the species by beneficial god-AIs. god-AIs. Tis is also view which goes to the other extreme, and is equally soteriological. soteriologica l. Let us call this view “soteriological singularitarianism, singularitar ianism,”” or “salvific uturism” or short. Te reasoning in this case is also easy enough to understand. As the level o technology increases, increases, the most important orms o material scarcity are essentially solved, so that man need no longer suffer rom amine, disease, or poverty. Between godlike godl ike AIs and servant serv ant robots, all the problems problems o material production and distribution will eventually be taken care o without without the least human strain. Tis will ree man rom the burden o labor so that he may aspire to ever higher heights o creation and understanding, a society o philosopherkings who accept the material comort as a means o intellectual cultivation. Such a picture is comorting and, in a sense, realistic. realistic . O course it may be accepted that some, given reedom rom labor, labor, will only pursue nihilistic hedonism as an end. As discussed above, such will rapidly select themselves out o the population, so we are not concerned with that problem. Te problem is, however, however, that the creation o new technologies, while it may solve certain material requirements, will not solve the essential problems o the coordination o society. All social issues that stem rom the ailure to provide a social strucstr ucture that optimizes or human virtue in the Potent are not solved by the alleviation o material shortcomings. In act, material shortcomings has never been a problem or the Potent, so any Singularity, i such were to occur, would not ultimately eliminate the administration o society (in a broad sense) that must be undertaken by the elite. echnological echnologica l advances may change the constitution o the Potent, but it does not eliminate the Potent. As such, salvific uturism, uturism , in regards to the question o social structure, stru cture, is a complete non-starter. It doesn’t hurt to solve the largest problems o scarcity, but it doesn’t solve the problem we are looking to answer or.
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R����� ��� B���������� Race is a biological reality realit y. It is as certain as the theory o evolution, or the existence o populations within a species that may be contrasted along racial lines is just a prediction o the theory. o look at the human species and ail to find the work o evolution would to some degree alsiy the theory and embrace a kind o creationism. Distinct groups o humans have been historically historical ly subject to different environmental conditions, and inasmuch as those environments worked distinct selective pressures over those groups, then those groups shall have contrasting properties. Tis ought not to be a controversial thesis, or it is only only the elementary application o a theory any student o biology ought to be acquainted acquainted with. Yet the willingness o neoreaction to embrace the reality o race and, by extension, biopolitics, has earned it a most certain spite by modernity, which is ideologically ideologica lly opposed to such a possibility. Why does it upset modernism so? Accepting that people are innately different is com compatible patible with modernism and does not entail arbitrary difference in treatment, so applying the same reasoning to groups o people ought not to produce any troubling notions. Yet there is the strange term applied to the scientific sci entific study o race, ‘scientific racism,’ racism,’ as though admitting the reality o race beyond social socia l construct is essentially racist. But one’ one’s belies about the differences in race does not require any arbitrary difference in treatment, only that there shall tend to be different treatment on the basis o those innate differences. Tat isn’t isn’t racist, unless grouping together indi viduals by intelligence intelligence such such that you you have the the population population which is “genius” genius” and the other other which is “retarded” “retarded” where the difference in treatment o those two distinct populations is somehow intelligentist, which doesn’t make sense because the different treatment o those two groups is justified by that difference in intelligence. It is that such differences, because they are systematically systematically ascertainable by race, shall become entrenched into the system, and thus better privileges shall accrue to those races that have more innately pro-social and useul traits, while those races which lack that distribution o beneficial traits shall be systematically treated with less preerence. preerence. Te modernist ears this, because becaus e he implicitly acknowledges that the real difference in race would justiy that different treatment, and thus the whole project o the Enlightenment which seeks to bring knowledge to all is shown to be elusive. He wants the best or all, but is unwilling to grapple with the unsettling unsettli ng reality which such differences portend. I a given race is globally global ly inerior, then those individuals unlucky to be born in to that race will be le behind, as there is no place or them within the competitive competitive institutions o society, be that the market or the amily amily.. Society Societ y at best may accord them a status o lower class, with some ew exceptional individuals possessing the ability to join the rest, though what ew o these there are shall have less opportunity to prove themselves compared to those individuals rom races in which the possession o those talents makes them merely typical, or it only makes sense to distribute opportunity to those populations which are statistically statistical ly more likely able to excel. It is only a simple exercise o statistics to see that it will always be economically efficient or or races with superiority in socially beneficial traits to be accorded a privileged place in the distribution o opportunity to prove themselves. In other words, words, the reality o race and the inevitability o distinct perormance within society given equal opportunity would tend to see the abolishment o equal opportunity, as it simply would not be profitable enough to dredge an inerior race when less resources will find a number o equally suitable candidates in another race. Te libertarian, implicitly wedded to the modernist myth o the equality o distributed propensities propensities between the races as he is, offers the argument against against the modern liberal that policies such as affirmative action are unnecessary. unnecess ary. Such policies, which are meant to equalize equaliz e opportunity or historically underrepresented under represented races by the redistribution o employment opportunities rom those races historically perceived to be superior to those perceived to be inerior, are superfluous to the market mechanism. Assuming equality o productivity between different races, it would be profitable to target or employment the underrepresented races. Such an argument is economically sound, but the problem or the libertarian is that he doesn’t countenance what such an argument suggests. I it is ound that races remain unequally represented in certain orms o 27
employment, then it ollows that, per economic science, those races are not equal in productivity. Tese realities shall color our prejudices, and indeed it is only rational to do so. Te modernist, in the ace o the verifiable reality that evolution does its work on the human species, is apt to call this racism. racism. Some proudly bear the moniker, though this seems the wrong means o integrating the reality o race to our behavior. I the prejudice is justified, it can’t can’t be immoral. Some subtleties o behavior shall have to be introduced, rather than letting the caricaturized, derogatory derogatory term be applied to a behavior it is morally incumbent on us to adopt. Prejudice is short or “pre-judgment.” “pre-judgment.” It does not imply a lack o ollow-up judgment on the basis o new inormation that becomes available. Tis means that the prejudice is deeasible, i.e. our behavior changes in the case that it is possible to retrieve the most directly relevant inormation about the individual. It is in those cases when such inormation is not accessible due to the circumstances o lie that prejudice shall have to suffice least one puts themselves at unwarranted risk in order to overcome overcome that prejudice. I have a prejudice prejudice against going going on bridges that appear ready to collapse, and I am under u nder no burden to undertake the overriding o that prejudice by going out on that bridge. O course it may be that the bridge only appears rickety, appears rickety, but the assessed benefit o finding out does not outweigh outweigh the cost o risk. Appearances Appearances may be deceiving, but they can only ever deceive i they were ever reliable in the first place. Te only advice that may be warranted warranted to those groups which shall have the least advantage under prejudice is that they ought to do what they can to dissociate themselves rom the negative elements o that group by appearing as members members o a respectable caste. A black person in a neat suit who takes the name o Robert and speaks in fluent Midwestern English shall ace very little prejudice compared to a white person who signals by his own own appearance and behavior affiliation with criminal gangs. Race is something, but it isn’t isn’t everything. Te potential or an individual to pre-emptively deuse happenstance prejudicial associations as it is, it remains the case that there will be systematic systematic differences in perormance, and thus there will be castes, or classes, distinguished distingu ished in part not only by income or vocation, but by by race. Tis undermines the modernist vision o o “diverse “diverse”” or colorblind colorblind selection into organizatio organizations ns into communities, communities, and oretells oretells o extensive selsegregation like already occurs despite the best efforts o modern states to incentive and enorce integration. What the modernist takes to be an unmitigated unmitigated negative, as the dream o truly equal opportunity without without basis in race is smashed upon the rocks o Nature’ Nature’s God, the reactionary reactionar y racist might praise. It is easy to sympathize with such a position. position. Tere is, I believe, another another take that can be given. Tis is a text on ideology, and as such is not exclusively committed to any particular political philosophy. Tough I do indeed have my own philosophy, and there is a general tendency o conservatism amongst reactionaries, reactionaries, the ideological take, which embraces a pluralistic political shape, has the resources to turn reality into a benefit. I the reactionary ideological take may be summarized, to distinct groups groups o people distinct orms o governance may be optimal. While some orms o government government are just set against themselves theoretically (e.g. comprehensive socialism or communism) and so cannot be recommended or any group o people, there are structures applied rom sound political governance which optimize or that society’s potential. Note that what is “optimal” “optimal” or a society, working rom certain givens o resources, prosperity, level o education, genetic genetic stock, and so on, will not be equal between societies. Facing the reality o race and its not-yet ully explored affects, the work o political philosophy has much yet to integrate to itsel that has completely completely evaded the universalism or egalitarianism o thinkers such as Marx, Rawls, or Nozick. I an example may be proposed: colonialism is not essentially essential ly evil. I this conjures uncomortable images, suppose the Earth were to be colonized by a benevolent spacearing species that possesses ar more knowledge and resources than the entire entire globe. It is easy to see that, given the differences between ourselves ourselve s and 28
these extraterrestrials, they might, to their profit and our own depose own depose all presently reigning human governments and institute new bodies o law which, being similar, are yet different rom legislative corps we would choose or ourselves. Given their superior knowledge and experience in the matter, matter, their orm o o governance sel-governance , but i giving up selis probably superior to our own. Yes, this defies the democratic virtue o sel-governance, governance yields such great rewards, it seems rational to accept such an offer. Are there issues to the global colonization o our planet by an extraterrestrial extraterrestria l species? Undoubtedly. Yet it is easy to see that, on the balance, colonial governance governance may render better returns. returns. Aer all, i the aliens were to agree with your own general political philosophy and they instituted that or us, you wouldn’t be likely to disagree. Whatever profits they exact out o the relationship, relationship, i it makes us better off, there is no reason to not go along with it. Optimal governance, given societies which are either racially homogenous or heterogeneous, shall likewise take distinct orms. And, between the two, it it may be that increasing racial homogenization yields higher returns or one group or or both. Or it may be that a certain admixture admixtu re is optimal, as it allows ewer resources to be dedicated to the process process o distributing opportunities equitably. Tis is an issue o urther urt her discussion, and I don’t don’t have any hypotheses either way as yet. Again, the difference could come down to the particular society and its level o technology technolog y and access to resources. Tere is no “one “one size fits all” solution to politics. Democratic imperialism, which is the orcible exportation o one’s political philosophy to other cultures and societies, is doomed to ailure, and the particularly American orm o imperialism we have been witness to since World World War War II has only succeeded on the utter ruin and destruction destruct ion o the society in question. Short o nuclear annihilation, the imposition o alternative “liberal democratic” structures o governance shall always be rejected. —
T�� V����� �� C��������� Neoreaction has been called a libertarian heresy. Te distinction is cladistic rather than morphological; that is to say, it is a heresy in the sense that it was begun rom a libertarian attitude in response to the inadequacies o libertarianism, libertarianism , as explored above, though now it no longer possesses libertarian libertar ian tenets. It is, rather, a deep and principled conservatism wedded to the principles o a trenchant and thoroughgoing thoroughgoing social analysis. Whereas libertarianism may be practically identified with a branch o economics, be that the Austrian, Chicago, or some other sympathetic school, conservatives have a view on the economy which flows rom normative premises and accepts the best economics or getting the preerred outcome. Te “normative” “normative” premise o libertarian liber tarian economics is the preerence preerence or utility and efficiency are above all other potential outcomes. Te strict separation o economy economy and society under the libertarian view holds that all al l values are determined in society, and the economy only maximizes or distributing distributi ng on the basis o those preerences. Tere is a lack o openness to effects on culture, order, and civilization in general, the notion apparently being that i a society wants to die, the market ought to maximize or that preerence just as it might any other preerence. Given this, we might level an attack at the system o capitalism in the sense that efficient market outcomes are not always equitable. equitable. Tis is especially likely to occur i other elements o o society are disrupted rom coordicoordination, i.e. social institutions, in which the resultant “economic maximization” or preerences within such a limited sphere overlook the loss o civilizational sustainability. For that, the ocus o libertarians on the economy is not misdirected, misdirecte d, only insufficient. Te “economy” “economy” and “society,” inasmuch as one might like to distinguish between betwee n the two, have have uzzy boundaries. boun daries. “Corporate culture” is a clear example o the overlap. overlap. Te existence o the economic space engenders social construction construc tion o 29
a particular particul ar kind which wouldn’t wouldn’t exist without that particular particul ar economic space. Economy influences society, which libertarians appear reticent to admit, as though market negotiations negotiations really did occur in the abstract axiomatic space o economic though experiments, without reerence to the obligations an individual owes or preers to institutions or the way in which economic competition may alternately support and sever such relationships between individuals and institutions. Te critique o capitalism that it is too efficient, in that it allows a social “race to the bottom” in the production o “mass culture” or “mass man” man” is correct in mechanism. However, However, given the oregoing in the section on uturism, this must be admitted as a double effect. Tere are some who, who, given the opportunity to annihilate their person in decadent, endless entertainment, entertainment, will go ahead and do so; enabling excellence brings with with it the danger o o enabling sloth. It is pointless to remain rustrated over this. Te shadows in the cave will always remain alluring to some nihilists. We can only be grateul to perceive a higher sphere o human living. We are able to simultaneously grant the critique o mass culture while cleaving to capitalism, or the good it achieves is the good o the Potent. Potent. Te values that allow capitalism to operate and the application o talent and skill therein may maniest mass man’ man’s depravity but it equally maniests the excellence o the best. I anything, we should preer a more clear and obvious stratification o society, so that those who seek aer the good may filter out those who seek out degradation. Allowing mass man, who was always with us and only became more clearly observed with capitalistic prosperity, to select himsel out allows the best to more easily select themselves in. What is capitalism, and what are its values? Tere tend to be two popular and competing competing definitions between betwee n scholars. I am not concerning mysel with the popular popul ar take, or mass man’ man’s take, or mass man’ man’s take is itsel a commodity marketed and sold as opiates or psychological compensation or unwillingness to succeed. Economists would define capitalism in terms o o “pure economic reedom.” reedom.” Capitalism, under this definition, is just unrestrained trade. Te other definition is more ocused on the makeup o o the market rather than its condition. Tis definition holds capitalism to be “the private ownership o the means o production.” Inasmuch as one holds to the first definition, it seems clear that the content o the second definition ollow, or under pure economic reedom there would be no compulsion compulsion to und public means o production. Tere may be “communes” which hold ownership in common, but it would be noted that such a structure remains technically corporate, or it would be impossible or them to reely rent out the use o the commune’s own resources to reeloaders lest the commune immediately have its resources stripped rom it by those who do not share its vision. Given the first definition, the state o affairs named in the second definition ollows by necessity. What counts as “capitalism” “capitalism” is extremely broad, and may be b e hard to express positively. Te quickest negative definition would be that capitalism holds provided intervention into social and economic transactions by the use or threat o orce (coercion) is entirely negated. Te positive definition in respect o that is capitalism is wherever exchange exchange takes place by the ree will o all al l parties. But this is dubious. Given the existence o the state, “capitalism” “capitalism” holds only in those spheres o the economy ree o regulation; but as all spheres spheres are technically under the purview pur view o the state (by definition), then the potential o intervention, inasmuch as it is considered the right or just power o the state to do so, suffices as the threat o violence. It ollows that capitalism could not exist under statism, or all individuals are to some degrees slaves and their exchanges between each other and their master/s are under coercive restraint.
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Furthermore, the libertarian treatment o coercion as though it does not hold to economic analysis is simply incorrect. Coercion and subordination under its pressure ollows everything economics predicts about all other orms o exchange. Te introduction o coercion and the promise to not exact its threat is a kind o contract the individual takes ta kes up, and is binding as well as any other other contracts may be bound. Tere is no reason to suppose that an individual who would coerce may not also keep promises, making him equally susceptible to market market analysis. analysis. How does the the coercer not become become coerced? By making the deal o allowing allowing his coercion his coercion rather than another’s tasteul in that he prevents the coercion o others on that coerced indi vidual. Te better he keeps keeps his word word about preventin preventingg unexpected and indeterminate indeterminate coercion coercion by by others, the coercion which is subject to regularity o occurrence would ultimately serve to lower time preerences, i the the coercion does actually prevent more coercion coercion rom happening than would otherwise. Libertarians and moral anarchists are uncomortable with this, yet such is clearly possible at the micro and macro scale. I I could at the micro level coerce another into not coercing, my use o coercion is preerable to society, since my act o coercion only upsets a orce which would’ve been more broadly destructive o the coordination which takes place in the economy. My act o coercion does not intrinsically intrinsical ly heighten time preerence, except among similar criminals. However, this “salvaging” o coercion as a just act in society brings a caveat that statists are also uncomortable with, or at least seem reticent retic ent to admit as a possibility. I the good o the state’s state’s coercion is that it at least regularizes the macroscale coercion which occurs, allowing time preerences to lower, then it also ollows that at a sufficiently low time preerence, the state becomes unnecessary to regulating macroscale coercion, as the economic mechanisms which seek to enable the regulation o economic disruptions would supersede the power o the state. Tis is, in a sense, to say that the market would eventually internalize interna lize the problem regulating or coercion and the enorcing o contracts, since the arrival o institutions which depend intrinsically on long term regularity (e.g. banks, financial institutions, and other institution-supporting institutions) find it in their interest to compete in the service serv ice o regulating regulating macroscale macrosca le coercion. Even the state is ultimately dependent on other institutions. Institutions have lower time preerences than individuals by necessity (as they subsist over generations, i.e. are constituted by individuals who derive higher time preerence goals within its structure), and so institutions which are essential to supporting other institutions must have even lower time preerences than those institutions, or those institutions derive their (relatively) higher time preerence goals within the structure struc ture o that institution. So on up; i the state is dependent or its efficient operation on other institutions (e.g. banks; central banks are an example o such, albeit in a comprehensively coercive orm), then it becomes worthwhile or the affairs o states as customers o these institutions to have the macroscale coercion environment it finds itsel within, as states are in a state o anarchy with respect to each other, to be even better regulated than the state is capable o. Why is there a limit to the state’ state’s efficiency in regulating macroscale macrosc ale aggression? As a simple matter o economics, the state’s dependence on coercion handicaps it in more efficiently regulating macroscale aggression. While a business which is able to effectively extort profit need not have as high quality a product as another business which is unable to, a business entity such as government which is only able to regulate macroscale aggression aggression to such a degree will ultimately be undone by the macroscale aggression aggression it is unable to regulate due to its separation rom the strictures o market. A business dependent or its sustenance solely on the ree will exchange o its customers customers with itsel has a direct eed on the efficiency and efficacy o its operation, while a business not solely dependent on the ree will exchange o its customers will not. As such, when society changes, government is less likely to keep up. Tose institutions which will support it, seeing this, will choose to take on the job o regulation o macroscale aggression or itsel, superseding the government’s authority in a sense while also producing more efficient results, making the government government obsolete. Governments last, on average, average, a rightully short time. A government government lasting longer than a century is the exception exception rather than the rule, and the institutions that support government would eventually preer a more reliable customer that doesn’t tend to all to pieces ollowing the mis-exercise o its own power. power. Te government, being dependent depend ent 31
on these institutions, but not being a necessary customer to these institutions, shall wither away and its legacy likely borne in a common-like common-like body o law over the territory it once ruled. Te effect o this is that it does not make sense so much to be “pro-capitalist” as not “anti-capitalist. “anti-capitalist.”” Te neoreactionary neoreactionary view o institutions, institutions, as has been and will be urther urther expounded upon, is where the ocus on capitalism comes in. Given the right institutions, capitalism capitalism is a orce which produces much good, because it produces much good or those institutions. Have corrupted institutions, and capitalism produces much good or those institutions, which ultimately is to the disadvantage o society. society. As such, “Is “Is capitalism good?” depends undamentally on whether the institutional institutional makeup o society is sustainable, sustainable, especially in the sense o whether it incentivizes the lowering o time preerences over time. Capitalism is subsidiary to the unctioning o society. It is taken as a given that it is economically economicall y efficient and socialism cannot produce sustainable sustainabl e growth or society, though the real evil occurs in that socialism erodes the natural hierarchy as it is acilitated by institutions by dis-incentivizing the reliance o individuals individua ls on natural institutions. Tese effects will be explored urther in the section on anarchism. anarchism. —
M�������, P�������, ��� E������ Slavery Slaver y is a limited orm o statism. Conversely, statism is a distributed orm o slavery. Te effect o this is not that statism statism is evil in itsel, nor that slavery is evil in itsel. Rather, Rather, it ulfills the dictum that master and slave is not a binary, but a continuum. Tis is only the upshot o all that has been said previously about hierarchy, archy, and how it it binds individuals to obligations to each other and themselves. Te sovereign, or master, master, is the only individual in society without obligation imposed upon him rom above, making him ree rom any sense o slavery; slavery ; likewise, the lowliest individual who rules over none possesses no sovereignty. sovereignty. Tis assumes an equal sense o monolithicism to monarchism, which isn’t isn’t actually the case. Hierarchy is polycentric; he who rules in one sense may may be required to serve serv e in another. another. All are servants o the king, yet the king is (ideally) the servant o the people. Te king’s king’s service to the people lies in regulating macroscale aggression and preventing society rom alling into stagnation by the adoption o modernist policies. He might not ulfill this calling, in which case others have no obligation to respect him as king. Why the reactionary’s p preerence reerence or monarchism? It is led by two actors; the displeasure o a democratic people and the incentives o the noble estate. Democracy Democra cy politicizes society societ y and makes all citizens a part o the process, at at least theoretically. Inasmuch as the process is effectively democratic, policies must be populist in reflecting the misguided desires o the mass. Te supposition that the average man “knows enough” to exercise his right to vote responsibly is laughable. Te legendary remark o Churchill that “the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter” holds to ar greater effect than advocates o democracy are willing to submit. Given not only the vast ignorance but the incentive to be ignorant about one’s voting, it is no wonder voting quickly becomes split along demographic lines, with those groups which oolishly vote not in their own interest but the interest o the common good being cannibalized by those more clannish groups willing to express their sel-interest through politics. Te relative corporate-mindedness corporate-minde dness o the average North North European settler o the American colony may have allowed democracy to operate or a ar longer time without alling into low intensity civil warare between classes and groups, but give the democratic process to societies which exhibit higher levels o clannishness and you see the split take place almost immediately. immediately. Tis is why the imperialist project o bringing democracy to the Arabic peoples, who are highly clannish compared to those o European descent, has the result o groups coercing coercing others through the ballot box. 32
In other words, the vote is a means o warare, as it entails the enorcing o one group’s vision or society on the other who dissented. Failing to utilize it as such, as one may keep a gun without the intent o murder, murder, does not mean it doesn’t doesn’t have that potential effect. effect . Just because it is given with the intent that is used a certain way does not make it happen happen that way. way. Ergo, the liberal belie that giving people pe ople the ranchise in politics will make them adopt it with a commitment to voting airly or “in the best interests o society” rather than mean sel-interest is a radical ailure to recognize recognize the potential or abuse. Tis with the liberal commitment that certain groups simply simply do not abuse privileges they are given, unearned, leads to the tendency o expanding the ranchise to those groups which are specifically not corporate minded. Could democracy democra cy work i the liberal commitment could be prevented? Perhaps or a longer time. Te problem is that the liberal commitment appears to be the reason to have democracy democrac y. I it were true, democracy would be reliable. But it is alse. Inasmuch as it is alse, it is proper to limit the ranchise. Tis leads only to the conclusion that democracy can be effective insoar as it is limited to those groups higher in the hierarchy, which not only resembles a monarchical system, but so much as it is more effective, proves the greater eectiveness i one stripped even this narrow group o ranchise and made political involvement dependent on heritability. Such would be a de acto monarchical government. What are the advantages o a monarchical system o governance over a democratic system? Te first is that a monarch must have a lower time preerence than democratic representatives o the people. As the representatives sentatives are always under the potential to have their power revoked in the next election, it is incumbent on them to accomplish as much as they will as quickly as possible, without care or whether it is most efficient in the long run. Furthermore, Furthermore, that they will not be le to inherit the costs o the benefits they amass or or themselves and their constituents, at least not inherited to anyone they have a particular care or, it ollows that they stand under even less incentive to promote sustainable models o governance than would an ordinary household in managing its own affairs. Democracy Democra cy rewards short-sightedness and punishes punishes advocacy advocac y o socially sustainable policy. policy. Te monarchical system o government, in other words, imposes the incentives that hold or a patriarch o a household on the ruler and so, what preerence men naturally have to plan or their estate beyond the duration o their own lietime is vested in the king in the act o ruling his people. Te government as privately owned estate is under the incentive to be managed as an estate, lowering the time preerence o rulers in the same way that patriarchy does or estates in general. Not only is the king under the incentive to keep government running efficiently over the course o his rule, which can last or decades, but he has the incentive to bequeath a sustainable sustainable model o governance to his children, as well as raising his children with the vocation o rule in mind. Te benefits o monarchy being clear to reactionaries, there remains a question o how it should arise again within modern society. soc iety. Tere is actually a very simple means o amassing power to an estate with the effect o instituting a monarchical orm o governance. governance. Te only difficulty would be the dissolution o democratic state power over a territory, but i we may assume such an opportunity to arise, either through the democratic state’s mismanagement and resultant need to sell or give up some territory or the outright orcible conquest, then the incentives in that territory to have an effective king should make such a monarchy arise. Te continuum o slavery to sovereignty makes it that it is mutually advantageous or individuals o disparate opportunity, due to any accident o birth, to exchange with each other in a servant-master servant-mast er relationship. Lest any conusion persist due to modernist misinormation, “slavery” is not an intrinsically oppressive institution, nor is slavery equivalent equiva lent to the actual ownership o individuals in the sense o property. Slavery is a kind o employment, albeit one which comes with greater restrictions on an individual’s liberty than those orms o employment (by a master) that allow a greater reedom o movement in society. All orms o employment require some subordination o one’s choices to that work, or otherwise the conditions that allow 33
the work to be done should not be obtained. I must at least give up my time and the opportunity o living in another place i I were to continue continue my employment at at some specific businesses. Hence slavery is by degree, with the lowliest slaves being those who must give up the greatest amount o reedom in order to have sustainable employment. Under modernist rhetoric, selling onesel into slavery is a great sin, but under the use o the word ound here, “slave” is the most terminologically apt or, while it circumvents the modernist tradition, it is placed within a much more comprehensive and pre-modern tradition o thought about the relationship between employees and their employers. Selling one’s one’s labor is a kind o selling o onesel, and so inasmuch as we consider “selling “selling onesel” onesel ” a kind o slavery, slavery, we must conclude that whoever sells his labor to another is a slave to some degree. While there will always be classes, and so some classes will be more obviously slaves than others, that one has a less burdensome chain does not mean he isn’t a slave. By this, slavery is no evil, but a means o virtue or many individuals. individuals. Tose who lack the capability o mastery and unrestricted sel-determination (i.e. can use their reedom to their and their amily’s sustainable benefit) are better off under this kind o slavery, as it allows those decisions to be made by one wiser. Both the master and the slave profit by the relationship they orm. Were it otherwise, no one should agree to be a master or slave. Is it better to be a master? Yes, but only i one has the ability. o he who has the ability, he should have it. Within the ramework o continuum between slave and sovereign, the sovereign becomes the one with the most power to enorce his will over his subjects. His “subject “subjects” s” become the distributed corps o individuals and institutions which ultimately owe their ealty to the king, even i not directly but in an indirect orm, much as an employee employee may be ruled by a manager who is ruled by an executive. Tis gives two means or or the establishment o monarchism within a ree territory, though it is likely both would be in effect. Te first is that de acto wage and debt slaves may sell off the right to quit in making a contract, placing him at a legally disadvantaged position position qua the buyer o the contract. Why should should an individual expose himsel to so much risk? Certainly deaulting on the loans would would be less costly than making onesel without legal recourse should should the contract buyer choose to extort his legally indentured indentured servants. An individual could develop a reputation as a just and wise ruler o his subjects, making submission to a king under a quasi- or outright eudal arrangement potentially potentially preerable to eking out a lie o poverty under the crushing cycle o not being able to save enough. Te ruler, in guiding the lie o his new subject, provides provides the service o reeing the individual in one way at the cost o another liberty, an exchange which is very potentially equitable i it makes one relatively prosperous. Te second is that o businesses which employ many can choose to be institutions which support a state institution. Such may come come with guild privileges and the like, i the king chooses to grant them, or they may come in the establishing o legal privileges or business institutions unique rom personal individuals. individua ls. I imagine the second path more likely, though the first is a time tested, i economically less efficient, means o vesting market market power power in a ruler. ruler. Both means would consolidate power which, assuming a number o such individuals within an area preer to orm a peaceable kind o quasi-oligarchy or aristocratic nobility, could very easily establish a de acto king with inherited political privilege and the closing o politics to all who are employed within the codified hierarchy. Given the possibility o a collapse o democratic orms o government and the incentives which society aces 34
in such a new power vacuum, it is likely that the change to monarchical governance would be swi, within only a ew generations, with the democratic past looked upon as a bizarre aberration o human history. —
A������-I��������������� Te topic and idea o anarchism is typically unclear in culture and, considering all I have said which is apparently in avor o government or more broadly governan broadly governance ce,, it is incumbent that I make a number o clarifications about what anarchism is beore I can go on to show how it coheres under the neoreactionary ideology. Foremost among these is that anarchism means nothing more than the lack o a government . government . Unless otherwise qualified (as the section sec tion title is), the advocacy o anarchism does not necessarily entail the advocacy o social dissolution dissolution and chaos. Anarchism Anarchism is compatible compatible with virtually everything said beore and aer this section, though it does require the willingness to see that governance is not equivalent to government within an hierarchical system. An institution may govern without being a government. Nor shall this be a thorough deense o deense o anarchism; I leave that to other works already written and being written. Like all other written here in this essay, essay, the purpose o expository more than argumentative, the coalesccoalesc ing o ideas and placing them under an ideological interpretation. interpretation. I anarchism is but the absence o government, then we require a good definition o government. I will augment a common definition or the purposes o this paper, giving us that government is “the social institution which is held by society to have a just monopoly on the just use o violence viol ence within that society. socie ty.” Tis definition allows us to see that ulfilling the actions that governments have have historically ulfilled does not make an institution a government. A mail service can exist without making any monopolized pronouncements on what constitutes the just use o orce, and so can those organizations dedicated to enorcing and servicing laws. “Government” in this way becomes identified not with its its enorcers, but its its unchallenged claim to be the only rightul authority or adjudicating disputes over past or potential uture use o orce. All abuses o government in the regulation o macroscale aggression in society come down to a complicit judicial system, or the judicial judicial system is the ultimate ultimate authority authority in discerning discerning whether a law law is just. While under constitutional orms o government the theory is that the judicial branch upholds the constitution which authorizes it, in reality the constitution is upheld by the judicial branch, rather than the other way around; what the judicial branch decides as being the canon o meta-laws on which judgment is pronounced or the justice o laws laws (o which which all laws are effectively about about the just use o orce orce applied applied to specific contexts contexts,, means, and ends) becomes the content-sour content-source ce or making decisions decisions by the judges. I the judges reject a particular source, that source lacks all effect, and it cannot be imposed on them by a legislative branch, since the workings o the legislative branch ultimately hinge on whether the judicial branch approves o what they do. An ousting o the judicial branch could be effected as in a coup d’état, but then the “military government” in this case simply assumes itsel that authority which the previous judicial branch took on. Tis use o “branches” may seem akin to the “division o powers” accomplished by the US Constitution, and indeed it is. Te Founding Fathers in utilizing explicit branches o government government were merely codiying an observation o how power has always effectively worked in governments, with the notion that it was to prevent a concentration o power an elusive intention. In reality, the US Supreme Court ultimately approved its own authority and its source in the US Constitution, bootstrapping itsel to ultimate rule over the just use o orce within society with the support o a legislative-executive body (I will note that under my description o government, the legislative and executive bodies are distributed on a continuum, sometimes even identical).
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As government must be ormally identified with this monopoly over the judicially-approved use o orce in society, then anarchism amounts at least to the dissolution o this monopoly. monopoly. Tere may still be judiciallyjudiciall yapproved use o orce and the regulation o macroscale aggression without an an individual judge or justice organization arrogating to itsel the right to prevent others rom providing these services. A polycentric and/ or common body o law may be developed to adjudicate relations between individuals where orce is rightly or wrongly introduced. Tis depends crucially on a level o trust between otherwise competing justice organization organizations. s. Why should should there be trust and mutually enorced contracts between separate legal entities? Why not not go to war in order to establish monopoly? Te problem primarily comes down to the matter o cost. Institutions are incentivized to orm because they provide the possibility to coordinate or group benefits, and this involves the cooperation o individuals who always ace the chance to gain at the expense o other individuals, with this only becoming a greater incentive the greater the trust that is required. In order to signal that one is trustworthy, generally contracts and arrangements are made so that success and ailure are mutually tied together, so that intra-institutional competition is minimized except where it may be applied to one o its specific goals. Coming to agreements beorehand with each other about how disputes shall be arraigned within this context minimizes the cost o conflict in the case that it does arise, and while such agreement to have disputes sub jected to an objective objective process may involve involve the sacrificing sacrificing o short short term gain, gain, it is to the overall overall benefit in the long run as it means even those resources given up in the short run will be recovered recovered in the long run by not needing to be spent on orcible means o dispute resolution. Tis being the case, separate legal, military, and insurance organizations (which may be maniest as separate or composite institutions) have the incentive to make arrangements with each other that subjects disputes between each ea ch other to an agreed upon process so that the cost o conflict is minimized. minimized . o put it very briefly, when an insurance organization representing a customer handles a dispute with the customer o another insurance organization, those organizations have the incentive to have agreed upon procedures or resolving their disputes. As this is the more-likely profitable profitable model in the long run, the opportunity or an individual to buy conflict is minimized, as all legitimate insurance organizations have the incentive to not offer the service o deending their customers’ crimes and to prevent other organizations rom operating that reuse to agree to arrange means o dispute resolution. Te crime business, considered as the service o keeping an individual rom suffering or the consequences o their crimes, will still exist much as it does now, though it will also be considered illegitimate by all legitimate security organizations within society, minimizing their anti-social effect. Anarchism must operate, in other words, on the basis o institutions which limit the range o anti-social actions that may be undertaken by individuals and organizations and which require arranged means o dispute resolution. Without institutions, there is no context or individuals in society to be placed under the incentive to involve themselves with these dispute resolution centers. But as institutions codiy codi y hierarchy and limit what it is possible or an individual to do in terms o anti-social action, society may stabilize under the quasioligarchic, rather than monopolistic, regulation o macroscale aggression. Oligarchic legal organizations rather than monopolistic legal organizations have lesser incentive to extort rom society the provision o unds, since the attempt to extort such unds can always be met by a cabal o organizations that have it in their interest to prevent any attempts at grabbing all the power or onesel. What society aces under government is altogether lessened; power is organized more on the basis o pro-social ser vices rather than anti-social anti-social destruction. Assuming Assuming that civilization civilization does not not all into or remain remain in a ailure ailure mode, this is the arrangement o society which will take place, which I give the name anarcho-institutionalism. ism. Te monopoly government holds over the regulation o macroscale aggression allows it to partake in its own 36
orms o macroscale macroscal e aggression, which systematically results in the dissolution o social institutions. It urthermore has the incentive to do this, or in the resultant dissolution o a kind o institution (e.g. the amily) the vacuum o social services ser vices previously ulfilled by that institution institution “must” “must” be undertaken by the t he government. government. In the very process o triggering the ailures o institutions at providing their intended ends, the government is able to arrogate to itsel those powers, with the only limit being that o time and technology or how pervasive may its administrative dissolution o institutions may go. Te government is an essentially anti-social institution, institution, in that its ends are primarily anti-social. Te use o orce, or coercion, is by definition anti-social. anti-socia l. Tis is not to argue that anti-social causes are unjustifiable, or the dissolution o an organization organization that has negative production or society is overall positive. positiv e. However, However, where there is the incentive to gain power in the destruction o other bastions o power, the subtle shiing o incentives so that individuals have less opportunity or means or reasons to orm non-governmental institutions which administrate particular kinds o governance, such as the raising and educating o children, the resolution o disputes, the distribution o material goods, and so on, and instead the government becomes the center o all social activity. activity. Tis produces what what has been variously called the welare-warare welare-warare state, social democratic communism, communism, and statism. I will call cal l this phenomena the State-Society, State-Society, or the boundaries between state-political state-political participation participation in society and mere participation participation in society becomes raught. Social action eventually just is politics, p olitics, the ultimate democratization democratization o all social structures so that what politics may intervene on is unlimited and the state enjoys truly absolute power over every acet o society. An example o the state’ state’s encroachment and dissolution o non-political spheres o society. Te American policy o social security, which is the public provision o compensation to retirees, works to dissolve the amily by incentivizing less investment by parents in their children in the orming o amily legacies and traditions. I an individual knows that his welare past the age o employability is not dependent on his children, it becomes less important to invest in instilling into his children the good o caring or one’s parents and the virtues that would would allow the child child to be materially materially successul to that end. While the clan clan may have have previously previously taken on the primary responsibility o caring or its elders, the state in taking on this responsibility dissolves the binds that tied together the amily. And that is only one example o state policy which leads to the dissolution o institutions in society. What was previously the primacy o society becomes the primacy o the state, so that individuals are more invested in the state ultimately. Tis only serves to increase the power o the state and its ability to urther dissolve diss olve other institutions in which power (due to the dependency o individuals on these institutions or their livelihood) is reserved, aggregating it all to itsel. Tus the State-Society which, which, being collectivist politically results results in social atomization. Tere is lesser opportunity at all to orm relations o mutual mutual will and civilization must cease to develop to urther levels. Individuals are are set against each other; all relations outside outside that o statemediated “society” are constructed to be antagonistic, the prolieration o prisoner’s dilemmas. Te eventual obsolescence obsolescenc e o the state is ideal then because becaus e it is required i institutions are to continue. An aspirational aspirational anarchism anarchism takes place; while the material o a society may not be b e advanced enough to achieve a distributed orm o the regulation o macroscale aggression, the handicapping o the state becomes an essential element o political philosophy so that, in the “ailure” o the state in providing or some service, social institutions orm to provide that service and contextualize the benefits or society o these sophisticated instances o organization. Te ultimate hope is not in the “right state” state” but the “right institutional structure o society.”
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C�������������� ��� E����-N���������� Te reactionary take on nationalism is pragmatic rather than deontic. o use popular language, it embraces nationalism due to practicalities rather than ideology, though o course my use o ideology in this essay is quite distinct, so I will explain it in terms o pragmatism over deontology. Nationalism is meant not in the sense o state, so it would be unsound to identiy nationalism as a ervor in avor o a particular government; there are nationalistic governments, and then there are cosmopolitan governments. Nationalism is defined in terms o ethnicity, and is the avoring o ewer distinct ethnic ethn ic groups within a given society. society. Segregation between distinct ethnicities ethnicities o differing cultural mores and innate psychologies is more nationalistic as compared with a “melting pot” which has some or many different ethnic individuals being integrated, either voluntarily or by orce, with the result o social tension or assimilation. Cosmopolitanism by contrast is the integration o many ethnic groups together. Favoring nationalism is not supremacist per se. It is only to stipulate that likes ought to be around around other likes; the more that people within a group are like each other, the ewer psychic and social resources must be dedicated to the development o Schelling points that provide or social coordination between relatively unlike people. Te more two individuals are alike in ethnicity, then the more alike in innate psychology those individuals are; granted there is the distribution distribution o psychological traits along a multidimensional multidimensional axis, but within a group there is a more tightly correlated average, rather than having multiple groups, each with its own average, attempting to cohere along a flatter distribution o psychological traits. o put it most simply, nationalism has an advantage over cosmopolitanism because it allows or the coordination o institutional ventures between individuals more easily. easily. Te more people within a population that are alike, the easier it is to empathize, which means it is easier to negotiate, to trade, to exchange, to interact, to resolve disputes. Te more a person is an other, other, the less that is known, the harder it is to empathize, the harder it is to resolve to instances o common cause. Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitan ism requires additional resources, additional institutions in order to acilitate peaceable cooperation between potentially radically different psychologies that differ along ethnic lines. Securing Secu ring “in-group” empathy is easier to do i you’re you’re already ethnically ethnical ly equivalent with the other; i you’re not, then other means must be secured to establish “in-group” empathy which must be admitted as an additional cost. Nationalism is identified not so much with ethnocentrism as a preerence or ethnic segregation by those ethnic groups themselves. Given an environment in which integration is not incentivized by various means, be they statist (in which case they are coercive) or natural (likely the city, or reasons to be explained shortly). “White nationalism” and “black nationalism” do not depend essentially on any claims to supremacy, even i it would be easy to understand that such orces may be motivated by a misguided notion o supremacy (which I will not rule out even i I do not know how supremacy supremacy could be established). It is taken as a given that people preer to be around others more like themselves rather than others more unlike themselves, which leads to the natural tendency o communities to segregate themselves by race, class, and history, with integration being a cost undertaken or other benefits b enefits rather than being sought out or itsel. Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitan ism as a contrast involves integration. Integration is a social phenomenon that is not costless, which is to say that some things must be given up in order order to gain it. Integration, perormed successull succ essullyy, can have very great benefits, but this integration must be based on mutual ends sought by individuals rom both communities; otherwise, i they want nothing to do with each other, they cannot be made to want to do anything with each other and will resist orcible integration, increasing social tension, racism, and other negative social phenomena. phenomena.
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It is the anecdotal experience o many that those who are “least racist” tend to live in highly segregated communities, e.g. white suburban neighborhoods with low presence o minorities, while those who are “most racist” are those who live in communities communities with higher rates o integration. Why does this occur? It occurs or a very simple reason. What individuals o an ethnic group are most likely to find preerable and thus understandable behavior isn’t equivalent between groups, which leads to behaviors that some groups find acceptable to be odious among other groups. Some groups which have a higher innate preerence or antagonism or out-groups will act in ways that are unpleasant to groups that have a lower innate preerence or antagonism o out-groups. Whites, who appear to be more corporate-minded, are less innately racist in the sense that being a member o another group is not usually taken as grounds or antagonism to obtain social proo or one’ one’s in-group. Blacks, on the other hand, may have a high preerence or antagonism as socia l proo o in-group sentiment, which leads them to being more innately racist and less pleasant to whites, with higher rates o anti-white anti-white crime and anti-social behavior at the extremes o this tendency. Allowed to segregate rom each other, each group is conronted less with those behaviors the other finds odious. A solution to racism, in other words, is to stop orcing integration, as i it is being around each other which necessarily leads to empathy rather than mutual antagonism as they disagree with each other’s other’s use o mutual space. In other words, racism has more utility in an integrated culture. Allow segregation, a lot o the grounds o racism disappear. Given that cosmopolitanism aces certain costs which a more nationalistic community, why ever would a community or population be more cosmopolitan? Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanis m likewise has its own benefits which nationalism cannot secure. Given a difference in aptitude to various skills and preerences by distinct ethnic groups, there is an advantage to trade between the groups as it utilizes the division o labor along the lines o absolute and comparative advantages. Some o these instances o comparative comparative advantage may be asymmetric, some may be vocationally vocational ly equivalent. We might suppose that autists are innately best at programming while extroverts are best at public relations; it then becomes advantageous or them to overcome the natural level o antagonism in order to take advantage o a vocationally equivalent equival ent comparative advantage. On the other hand, races o low intelligence may be systematically more likely to take on service vocations, reeing up more individuals rom smarter races to partake in inormation vocations; rather than one group being subjected by the other due to orcible integration, integration, integration integration under the common cause o mutual benefit actually serves to acilitate empathy. empathy. Integration occurs, in other words, due to the common cause certain groups have, with the result o incentivizing lower innate and behavioral antagonism to out-groups. Tis analysis is removed rom moralizing, amounting amounting to no more than sociological observation tied to realistic consequences o these acts. Tere is a bounty o evidence demonstrating innate out-group antagonistic tendencies. On the other hand, there is no necessary moral good in going beyond one’ one’s own innate biases to integrate onesel with those o other groups. Tere is a very real danger in comingling with groups one doesn’t know anything about, so the bias to stick to one’s own kind, including their own genetic kind, is an effective and rationally deensible deensibl e coping mechanism or the uncertainties o lie. Likewise, Likewis e, or those who are able to find profit in mingling with other groups, then that is their profit. Tere is however no intrinsic intrinsic good or evil either way about one’ one’s innate nationalistic or cosmopolitan psychological makeup. ma keup. Some people just preer the rural liestyle and some people just preer the city liestyle. It is a preerence no more significant than liking chocolate over vanilla, or vice versa. What people are worried about, and so emphasize their “anti-racist” belies as compensation, is that some people’s people’s lack o preerence or at least high tolerance or people o other groups leads to racism. aking people outside o an environment in which they are perpetually told how other groups are just as good as theirs and that the experience o others is legitimate, so the worry goes, and a llow them to place themselves in environments where there is no pressure pressure to signal anti-racist anti-racist belies will make them actually racist, with attendant attendant oppression o those groups in that person’s action. Tis overlooks that being orcibly integrated in addition to being told that your finding the behaviors o other groups odious makes you a bad p erson is just more likely to make a person tune out reasonable anti-racist messages. Te notion that only white people can be racist, 39
or at least that the innate racism o other groups is acceptable and understandable whereas the bland racism o whites is not, is typically understood as a preposterous notion oisted on integrated whites by sel-segregated whites who deny the legitimacy o interaction with the odious behaviors o other groups. Te suggestion is less that racism can be solved by any single means, i there is anything that can be done to entirely eliminate it, but that it isn’t improved by denying the legitimacy o differing opinions about the behaviors o other groups. Tere will be clashes between betwee n cultures, and i you have only only as many contact points between different cultures acilitated acilitated by actual common cause (e.g. business as I expect in most cases) rather than manuactured interaction with the purpose o orcing to appreciate something they have no disposition towards, and implicitly denying the validity o white identity and culture compared to others, this is no solution to racism, but the identification o the problem o racism with a scapegoat group (i.e. whites) is certainly only a redirection o that racism. Some more radical actions with neoreaction may have worries over my unwillingness to deend outright racism, rather than mere racial realism and rational prejudices. I am perhaps more more optimistic that, given a lack o orci o orcible ble integration, integration, some level o o integration between those who are willing may be allowed. Distinct cultures and ethnicities possess legitimate experiences and predispositions predispositions which may be useully us eully evaluated, even potentially adopted. adopted. As supposed above, above, I imagine these will be in the cities, which will be more cosmopolitan, which may be considered a hierarchy between those more disposed to nationalist (in my sense) communities and those more disposed to cosmopolitan lie. Tis is not on the basis o a “live and let live” mentality, as is ound in the rightly criticized modern libertarianism, but to draw out alternative and competing competing goods. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism each possess various benefits benefits not available available to the other other,, and to those who are able able to obtain obtain them, they should should be ree to do so. Te opposition is to neither sel-segregation or sel-integration, but orcible segregation and orcible inteintegration. Both are the same kind o mistake. Ethnic identities come in various flavors, with some being more nationalist and some more cosmopolitan. Assuming the legitimacy o divergent ethnic experiences, there is nothing that should stop groups mingling together or dispersing as they see fit. Such a view brings the orcible colonization o other cultures into question. Even i is the case that the colonized culture is better off or it, a soer orm o colonization, predicated on the basis o mutually chosen exchange, is preerable in that it is less destructive o cultivated traditions traditi ons in the colonized culture. Given the traditions being replaced are inerior to the imported cultural maniestations o tradition, the ree integration o a mutually exchanged culture is more likely to produce sustainable traditions, in the establishment o new institutions and their own traditions and the augmenting o pre-existent traditions to a orm more adaptable to the new cultural cu ltural context. —
T�������� ��� ��� R����� �� C���������� Religion is a useul vehicle o social engineering. Its cosmology, its prescriptions and proscriptions, its accumulation o power in elitist institutions (e.g. the Vatican), these all tend to make it poised to provide a readymade and persistently deended worldview which results in a greater potential potential degree o social coordination. Pro-social morals couched in mythological and religious language led to the rise o civilization, civilization, and virtuv irtually all comprehensive social movements partake o a religious soteriological soteriologica l posture. Religious institutions which last over time must provide provide evolutionary benefits to its adherents, and their ocus on eternity instills the lowest average time preerence compared to other institutions. Tis leads to extremely sophisticated structures o governance that allows it to ride out centuries-long periods o decline, even allowing it a high 40
likelihood o surviving complete social collapse, as witnessed with the Roman Catholic Church in the West ollowing the decline o the Roman Empire. Christendom o Christendom o course reers to the superstructural makeup o Medieval Europe; in other words, it is the Catholic Middle Ages equivalent equivalent to the modern American Cathedral. Te proposal by traditionalists traditionalists to return a higher degree o moral power to the institution o the Church is an embrace o the means o the Cathedral. Some are wary o supporting another another superstructure, but this occurs under the mistaken assumpassumptions that superstructures are necessarily negative negative or society and that a highly coordinated coordinated level o social capital can occur without a superstr superstructure. ucture. Tere would be others who preer a secular, secul ar, albeit reactionary, reactionar y, superstructure. My answer to the latter group is brie: religious institutions such as the Catholic Church lower the overall time preerence o civilization. Not only are the religious institutions themselves remarkably uture-oriented, but they instill values and mores within society that are also beneficial or rewarding greater uture-orientedness. A religious superstructure must then have sufficiently low time-preerence to oster sustainable socioeconomic arrangements arrangements and diminish the likelihood and scale o destructive social movements. It is urthermore questionable whether a “secul “secular ar superstructure” is even ormally possible. Without a very broad all-encompassing common cause, coordinating the actions o powerul institutions is very difficult. We may only care to distinguish between those ideologies which are materialistic in common cause or spiritual. A secular superstructure must at least take on a religious religious posturing, with the attendant attendant blind spots and prejudices in the aithul. Te point at at which a “secular” context becomes a totalizing narrative about the ultimate purpose o the individual and mankind, it may best b e called a religion, whether or not it reers to classical staples o religious worldviews worldviews such as God or the supernatural. Tere may be the worry over whether religion is (in any way) true, and the desire that people shouldn’t be placed under pressure to be religious. I think the concern with indoctrination is over-stated. over-stated. Not only are the vast majority o people susceptible to indoctrination, this vast majority can’t even obtain a modicum o moral agency without being effectively indoctrinated. indoctrinated. Whether this indoctrination indoctrination comes rom preachers or teachers does not matter. Te prevalence o near-universal near-universa l education in post-industrial post-industr ial countries is testament to the act that with increased material prosperity, a greater degree o socialization is requisite or a person to keep up with change. One might note the inter-generational gaps in culture brought about by the lack o socialization into digital media o generations generations older than 40. Some may say this is a depressing picture. It is this which makes the long timescale o civilization civiliz ation possible, as it means a people are generally sel-regulating. sel-reg ulating. A civilization o philosopher-kings is not only unrealistic, it is undesirable. A high ratio o o exceptional individuals individua ls within a society who obtain some level o sovereignty rom and over the process o socialization would result not in an abundance o pro-social institutions, but the dissolution o institutions as these individuals resist any any process that would serve to socialize social ize them. Tankully, no society is even remotely near that ratio. While this natural complicity and complacency o mass man with the reigning superstructure does permit abuse, it may also be used to society’s own benefit. Tis is the goal o introducing a religious religious superstructure. superstr ucture. Religious worldviews, unlike secular worldviews, provide cohesive moral injunctions or a people to ollow, ounded in static texts and traditions. Te secular view provides no basis or the development o a tradition, as it admits no necessary group charged with ritualizing power relations. Ritual is a Schelling point which secularism must deny. It is a modernist to have undue sentiment or the mass man, as though he can or should be raised rom his 41
state o thorough socialization. However, However, it must be pointed out that socialization socializati on is a requisite to a person obtaining moral agency. Void authoritative, i.e. non-reasons based, instruction, the individual individua l simply does not learn how to move in society. o be treated as an independent moral agent as a child would be disastrous or the child, yet the child does not gain his independence until until is taught to him through social stimulus. A mature individual is a socialized individual. Te socialized individual may be contrasted contrasted with the sovereign individual who has been socialized but who, due to an internal will, embraced his worldview on the basis o independently independ ently ound reasons. Te differences between the socialized and sovereign individual individual are most obvious when the socialized individual, in deending the perceived status quo (or perceived counterculture), relies not merely on allacious reasoning, but on social and subjective reasons. Given the socialized individual rarely amounts to more than the sum o his own socially constructed person, it brings ocus rom that o bringing about change through more democratic and mass populist movements to capturing the superstructure and beginning to alter the process o socialization as it concretely occurs. Te democratic people can only be rallied i they already agree to your ideology, ideology, so it is a waste o time to try tr y and convert everyone rom the ground up. up. When neoreaction asks a person to stop embracing comortable fictions, will they? Te more socialized they are, the less they are sovereign, sovereign, the less chance they will stick to neoreaction when it it comes to making sacrifices. Only i a person can tell that the reigning process o o socialization has harmed them will they become more susceptible to effective conversion, though optimism should be tempered as to the potential p otential depth o their articulated opinions. Christendom, Christendom, and by which I mean specifically a Catholic superstructure, superstructure , may only be able to rise again ollowing a collapse. I personally have little sympathy or Protestantism, as it is ideologically ideologica lly opposed to reaction. Above I equated Protestantism with spiritual spiritual egalitarianism, egalitar ianism, predicated on the rejection o spiritually privileged positions within the Church. Church. Wi Within thin a reactionary society Protestants would be in the same position as conservatives conservatives within a modernist society; ideologically compromi compromised. sed. I do not mean to extend a polemic within this text, but it must be understood that a superstructure which includes a monolithic monolithic institution can achieve more comprehensive social coordination. Te nearest Protestant equivalent o the Catholic Church might be the Anglican Church, which does take an ideological leadership o mainline denominations, though clearly its tendencies are contrary to what we’d hope to see, which establishes the true ideological bent o Protestantism. beore . It is a social-historical radition is ar more than what has been done beore. social -historical context which provides provides the means o beneficial perpetuity which ties together together the uture with the past. By definition, a tradition tradition must benefit perpetuity, or a tradition is simply that which is passed down through generations, including not only its means o transmission but the end o transmission. I the notion o “anti-tradit “anti-tradition ion”” makes sense, it must be identified with materialistic nihilism, the pursuit o an individual’s pleasure without planning or perpetuity. perpe tuity. Understood as such, it is easy to see that the modern age is not only untraditional, untraditional, it is anti-traditional . Fewer individuals than ever beore are having children, and those who do remain more ocused ocuse d on their own materialistic pursuits than the education o their own children and the transmission o a continuity rom their own past to the uture. Anti-tradition Anti-tradit ion is equivalent equivale nt to memetic stillbirth. stillbir th. While judgment may be passed on anti-tradition or the conceit o nihilism and the destruction o the uture o one’s own, it is a always maladaptive to the social mercy that rom the evolutionary evolutionary social-historical perspective nihilism is always maladaptive environment in the long run. A people that turns its its back on its lie-giving and lie-preserving lie-preserv ing traditions is bound or ruin, either at its own hands or the hands o another. raditionalism in this context is a description o the kind o memes which are passed down through amilies and guarded by them. them . Tis is on one hand not a mere deense o tradition trad ition or tradition’s tradition’s sake, in the style o Burke, dependent as it is on an anti-rationalism as though governance and society are beyond understanding. 42
Te sake o traditionalism is or lowering time preerence, so that all, not only the patriarch whose incentives are naturally guided in this way, are incentivized to place themselves into a social context in which the end is something outside themselves while providing an end to their own lives as well. Whereas anti-tradition is a nihilistic game o accumulating material and social goods without the intent o it placing the individual in a larger context, traditionalism is the preerence or roles unchosen but assumed which link one together to his ancestors and progeny. progeny. Catholic traditionalism Catholic traditionalism is only to say that the traditions o a society, passed on in its respective institutions, are marked by an essentially Catholic character, and unite the traditions under the good o Christian lie. It is my own preerence and belie that it is ar more sustainable than non-Catholic, even i they are Protestant Christian, traditions, traditions, though I leave it to those unpersuadable to Catholicism to determine their own optimal arrangements o tradition. Te point o an overarching context o traditions, a kind o super-tradition as it were, is in order to oster greater overall cohesion in society. Te development o traditions outside this super-traditional super-traditiona l context may may lead to the production o mutually exclusive traditions, instilling more division between groups and disrupting the potential coordination o society into institutions and superstructure. What would be preerred preerred o a super-tradition is the grounding o rules that makes traditions mutually compatible, instilling cooperation even between ormally opposed groups. Ultimately, tradition is the most abstract vagary o neoreaction, yet also the most important, or it alone could tie together the vagaries into a cohesive social political politica l philosophy. philosophy. It would do so by introducing each new individual into contexts o cohesive social cooperation which are greater than the individual and instill the value valu e o that individual’s individual’s end in providing their contribution to perpetuity. Tis is at a contrast to the present, in which most are instilled into a lietime pursuit o the accumulation o material goods, placing economic goods above all others, which has lent itsel to the resultant nihilism o those who select themselves rom the honor o reproduction. Tis is why I am at once skeptical o the easibility o secular secu lar traditions and must insist on the preerability o religious traditions, even to those who think religion is but an obsolete misunderstanding misunderstan ding o the undamental undamenta l nature o o the world. A totalizing narrative, which is uniquely a propproperty o religions, can provide a coherent narrative or all groups o o people within a society, rom slave, master, master, man, woman, child, black, white, rich, or poor, acilitating their cooperation and peace with their place in the hierarchy. —
W�� R�������� W�� N��� It is called calle d ‘neoreaction’ in the sense that this isn’t isn’t the first instance o reaction. Tat would be true, but the previous instances o reaction are not not historical, they are ideological. In other words, words, what makes this a “new orm o reaction” reaction” is that it it is truly a new orm o rreaction. eaction. It goes outside the bounds o modernist ideology and gets at something entirely original, a whole new premise o social organization. Tis is not a mere conservatism, but a conservatism guided by unique principles principles that diagnose and transcend the occult motivation motivation o the Zeitgeist. It is that which allows it to be a true contender, contender, rather than merely a perspective which may be ultimately re-negotiated in the stoogiying complex a well-adapted idea-species ought, wherein dissent is allowed and actively developed, provided it does not ever amount to a true challenge against the occult moti vation. In one sense it the reusal to dialogue with modernism that allows neoreaction to develop, or the very idea o modernism is that dialogue only occurs in the case that one accepts its presuppositions about the good 43
o equality and the dissolution o historically historicall y undamental institutions in the name o such a pursuit. Seeing that equality costs so much, the neoreactionary opts instead or the secure oundation o natural society, Nature and Nature’ Nature’s God as it has been called. cal led. Te willingness to ask certain questions with a view to actually actual ly hope and to see opens see opens the mind pursuing their answers without pausing to consider what one was taught to hope and to a reality which has otherwise been b een precluded, so it is no wonder that it should be called a Dark Enlightenment . What has been orgotten has been remembered, remembe red, recovered, and now it is the wonder o how how to reorm. From the reactionary reactionary perspective, modernism is not merely merely a mistake. It poses a undamental threat to huhuman flourishing. Embraced at the global level, which it has not yet accomplished, it it would lead to endless decline, only being thrown off aer the depths o another dark age. I it is the ate o humanity to endlessly come back to modernist ideology, then humankind is a ailure mode, o which only an enlightened ew can ever see man’s man’s cyclical ate. Such is a possibility, yet we must must labor under unde r the hope that modernism modernis m is not the necessary ate o human civilization, and the misappropriation o power as it currently goes on may be righted so that human flourishing again becomes the product o civilization. I this project o social theory may be described rom that turn, it is that society must be undertaken anew each generation. It is contrary to the modernist conceit o progres o progresss in that it does not suppose whatever changes are imposed imposed will never prevent civilization civilizati on rom rising to ever-higher levels. Free o the supposition that progress must happen as though it were an iron-bound law o the universe, it is able to consider the hypothesis that this superstructure superstructure is not the final or ideal superstructure. Where the modernist sees the end o history, the reactionary only sees an ongoing process or which the ideal orm o society is contingent on the givens o environment, people, and history. Yet a skepticism remains. Losing the deluded modern optimism about mass man, those who are ruled by power shall not undamentally undamentally understand the means by which they are ruled. Te reasons given here here are, even i syntactically open to understandin u nderstandingg by those who are ruled, r uled, the mass do not want to understand power or they should only have to understand that they are influenced in ways beyond their own comprehension, negating their own moral agency. Furthermore, Furtherm ore, to the extent that they understand, it may only instill a loathing in them o their rulers, or in not understanding understanding the justice o their rule r ule they think the placement o one group over over another in the hierarchy is arbitrary, baseless. basele ss. What makes the rich, rich? According to an overwhelming overwhel ming number o the poor, it it is due to accident. What makes the poor, poor? According to an overwhelming number o the rich, it is due to lesser capability. Which o these groups is right? What perspective is most in line with the truth? Tere is a chance that either group perceives an aspect o reality which the other doesn’t, or maybe aspect the other misses doesn’t matter to them. What matters more more is whether they can be provided narratives which contextualize their relations peaceably, in order that social coordination isn’t isn’t disrupted. disrupte d. Te individual ends o reactionaries are not all presently unified, and it would be a miracle outside all hope or splintering political division to never occur. Each will in his own own political philosophy take himsel to represent the authentic intent o reaction. reaction. It does not seem possible to argue over who is the “true political heir” o reaction, and I won’t won’t take a side on the issue. It seems equally pointless to try and argue that communists or eminists are the “true political heirs” o modernity. Te heart o the matter is whether the ideological ideologica l bent o civilization aims either at flourishing or destruction, and reactionaries are agreed that political philosophies subsisting subsisting under the ideology o neoreaction neoreaction shall better secure the uture than the current hegemony hegemony o modernism. What is the practical uture o reaction? Te uture construction o the ideology seems well-secured already, already, and though it would be impossible to predict what specific intellectual developments shall take place (at least without actually making maki ng those developments). Te notion to “do something” has been gaining traction between the like-minded reactionaries, though I must coness the potential to save the system rom its decline 44
is dubious, at least not without it being a compromise that would only serve to extend the decline and, by extension, the time at which recovery would occur. A sooner collapse may be preerable on the grounds that rebuilding with less mis-allocated capital and a less comprehensively indoctrinated indoctr inated population is easier. A later collapse may be preerable in that it would allow us more comort within which to perorm our reactionary analyses in preparing or taking the uture ollowing the decline. Or an entirely unthought o strategy strategy may be developed; practical politics is not my own specialty and I leave it to others to ormulate practical principles. My inability to postulate postulate the uture o reaction aside, I can still make some estimates about the appeal o reactionary views to the youth o our modern cultures. My own entry to neoreaction neoreaction was through the sexual realism o the androcentric blogosphere, blogosphere, particularly via its efficacy with predicting human behavior in social settings. Tis particular particul ar route has been undertaken underta ken by many many, though there are naturally other routes as well, typically through some given given vagary discussed above. Te general character o these conversion conversionss I take to be the disillusionment with the promises o modernism. modernism . Insoar as modernism may be understood understoo d as a kind o social contract which promises certain rewards or certain behaviors, the process in which it is discovered that the hypotheses modernism engenders about about the working o society come to be alsified by actual lived experience makes reaction a peculiarly anti-modernist anti-modernist ideology. ideology. Wi With th respect to the desire to actually repeal the political mistakes o the last decades, it becomes quickly apparent apparent that the entire project o the Enlightenment Enlightenme nt was flawed, which itsel was born in the radical spiritual egalitarianism egal itarianism o Luther. Luther. A justification to repeal modernism must itsel utilize ideas and principles which are vehemently un-modern, perhaps even premodern or postmodern, which leads to the discovery o the alternate ideological system o reaction, which gives an expression and rational voice to the occult motivation undiagnosed by modern political philosophies. What precisely explains this jump rom only one ideology ideolog y to another? Why don’t don’t we see this disillusionment disillusi onment resulting in the rediscovery and development development o diverse new ideologies? Te all-encompassing nature o ideology is the key to the answer. answer. Tere are only only two ideologies; modernism and reaction. Tis also explains the leward-rightward leward-r ightward division. Although political philosophy is multidimensional, ideology ideolog y describes a more general kind o phenomena, the phenomena o civilization. o augment an o-used reactionary analogy, analogy, ideology is the virus which inhabits the host society and, being better adapted, perpetuates itsel on the host; where this appears to draw a distinction between host (society) and virus (memeplex), I would say there is no distinction. distinction. Civilization Civilization just is ideology; ideology; ideology not only grounds grounds the possibility o civilization, it does so by providing the idea o civilization civilizati on which it becomes. Te overall possibility o civilization is inherent in the question “What is justice?” the answer to which yields your ideology. A political philosophy is only a rationalization rationaliz ation o that ideological impulse. Te modernist answers the question “reating like as like, and all are like” while the reactionary answers “reating like as like, and none are like.” Each in taking this answer not only views the other’s other’s answer as being wrong, but senseless. Both have equivalent definitions o justice and equality, but the senses are distinct in the evaluative methodology the ideology uses to analyze the constitution o society. History only goes in two directions with respect to flourishing; sustainably better or unsustainably worse. By definition, a system which is unsustainable unsustainable must be getting worse in the long-run, whether this occurs due to outright destruction destruc tion or the accumulation o time preerence heightening memes. Whether or not flourishing is increasing or decreasing comes down only to the social political actors o society, or all social action is constrained by ideology. Friedrich Nietzsche, though he’d certainly object to his being used in this way, speaks prophetically o the clash between modern thought and the world’s actual nature: 45
In all the countries o Europe, and in America, too, there now is something that abuses this name: a very narrow, imprisoned, chained type o spirits who want just about the opposite o what accords with our intentions and instincts - not to speak o the act that regarding the new philosophers who are coming up they must assuredly be closed closed windows and bolted doors. Tey belong, briefly and sadly, sadly, among the levelers - these alsely so-called “ree spirits” - being eloquent and prolifically scribbling slaves o the democratic taste and its “modern ideas”; they are all human beings without solitude, without their own solitude, clumsy good ellows ellows whom one one should should not deny deny either either courage courage or respecta respectable ble decency decency - only they are are unree unree and and ridiculously superficial, above all in their basic inclination to find in the orms o the old society as it has existed so ar just about the cause o all human misery and ailure - which is a way o standing truth hap pily upon upon her head! head! What What they would would like to strive strive or or with all their their powers is the universal universal green-pastu green-pasture re happiness o the herd, with security, lack danger, comort, and an easier lie or everyone; the two songs and doctrines which they repeat most ofen “equality o rights” and “sympathy or all that suffers” - and suffering itsel they take or something that that must be abolished. We opposite men, having opened our eyes and conscience to the question where and how the plant “man” has so ar grown most vigorously to a height - we think that this has happened every time under the opposite conditions, that to this end the dangerousness o his situation must first grow to the point o enormity, his power o invention and simulation (his “spirit”) had to develop under prolonged pressure and constraint into refinement and audacity, his lie - will had to be enhanced into an unconditional power will. We think that hardness, hardness, orceulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, lie in hiding, stoicism, the art o experiment and devilry o every kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is kin to beasts o prey and serpents, serves the enhancement o the species “man “man”” as much as its opposite does. Indeed, we do not even say enough when we say only that much; and at any rate we are at this point, in what we say and keep silent about, at the other end rom all modem ideology and herd desiderata - as their antipodes perhaps? 5 aking on Nietzsche or ourselves, would not the slave morality, i it must be equated to some group in history, be not the modernists? modernists ? Te notion that the hierarchy which places the slave at at bottom and the master at top under modernism is effectively inverted, where now the natural master works or the benefit o the natural slaves, the betters or their lesser. lesser. Tis must necessarily lead to the diminishing o flourishing, as the lesser are no longer directed to production by the social simulacra o power, the message distributed through all orms o social access and the betters who would are cut down while the t he system works itsel to the point o exhaustion exhaustion and beyond, settling into collapse. Maybe it is the reason or our eventual success, maybe it is a atal flaw, but this limits the necessity o winning over the mass o the public. public. Our reasons do not need to be brought down to the level o mass consumption, and indeed they couldn’t be. Who in the modern day, invested in the alse consciousness o sel-esteem, sel-estee m, would accept his natural state as a slave o some degree? Reaction is incompatible with cultural democracy democrac y in the same way capitalism is rendered incompatible incompatible with cultural Marxism. Neoreaction is an understanding understand ing reserved or a ew, though its effects would be elt by all.
5 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Friedrich . ranslated by Kauman, Walter. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy o the Future. Future . Part 1, paragraph 44. 46