The Elementalist Understanding Of Free Will

The question of free will is one of the classic philosophical dilemmas. Do we have any choice over over our own behaviour? Or are we fated to perform certain actions because of our genes and conditioning? Traditional philosophy has explored a variety of approaches to this question, but Elementalism provides a new one.

The questions above are the basis of what is known as the free will vs. determinism debate.

The free will argument contends that people can do whatever they want to. People have a choice between good and evil, between selfless acts and selfish ones, and if a person’s true will is good they will do good. As such, people who do good can be treated as if their will is good, and vice-versa.

The determinist argument contends that a person’s future actions are restricted to a range determined by, among other things, a person’s genes and their conditioning. People don’t really have a choice about what they do, because they can only motivate themselves to act if the wiring of their brain creates an impulse to action.

This is an important philosophical question because, as alluded to above, the resolution of it determines how certain miscreants are to be treated. If free will exists, then criminals can be punished harshly. If not, then they have to be guided into making the right decisions by behaviour modification.

The Elementalist perspective, as is often the case, is that mainstream philosophy has missed the point entirely.

Elementalists believe that all of us are, fundamentally, individuated consciousness, and that these individual consciousnesses traverse the Great Fractal by way of matching frequencies. To the Elementalist, there is no material world – every individuated consciousness is aware of a set of perceptions, and each set of perceptions exists somewhere in the Great Fractal.

These sets of perceptions change as the frequency of one’s individual consciousness changes. Therefore, to change the world to that which one desires, it’s only necessary to change the frequency of one’s consciousness. This can be done through repeated exertions of pure will.

Because there is no hard material world, there is nothing forcing a human being to behave in any pre-determined manner. There aren’t really any neurotransmitters, or any limbic system, or any instinctual response brain circuitry or anything else involved in decision-making. There is just consciousness and the contents of consciousness. Life is but a dream, through which consciousness passes, forever.

Elementalists believe that anyone can get anything they wish for, whether in this life or in one to come, by matching the frequency of one’s consciousness with the frequency of the part of the Great Fractal in which that thing exists or is happening. In fact, Elementalists go as far as to believe that one inevitably lives a life that matches the frequency of one’s consciousness, whether this is wanted or not.

Accordingly, a person has to be careful about what their true will is – because they will get it.

If a person’s true will is to assert themselves violently over others, they will gravitate to a part of the Great Fractal where the order of reality is the violent assertion of power over others. Sometimes they will benefit from that, and sometimes they won’t – that’s how it goes when you wish for such things.

If a person’s true will is order, then they will get order. They will end up in a part of the Great Fractal where chaos is minimised. A person who ends up in such a place might not like it on account of that they find the order suffocating. In such a case, this will be reflected by their true will, leading to a change in the frequency of that person’s consciousness, in turn leading them to another part of the Great Fractal.

If a person’s true will is peace, their frequency will come to reflect this as it comes to reflect the sum total of that person’s actions in their life. This will cause them to gravitate to a part of the Great Fractal populated by peaceful beings. An individuated consciousness might experience this as bliss – or hellishly boring.

In summary, Elementalists believe implicitly in free will, so implicitly that they strive to perfect their mastery over it. Mastery over one’s true will is mastery over how one navigates the Great Fractal – either one drifts ignorantly through existence or one dances skillfully through.

The Elementalist conception of reality teaches that we are individual fragments of consciousness experiencing the Great Fractal, which we are free to explore in perpetuity. As such, there is no reason to assume any kind of determinism beyond the Seventh Hermetic Principle, or the Law of Cause and Effect.

What that means, in practice, is that one can only move through the Great Fractal at a pace and manner determined by one’s previous actions. The more heavily one’s karma weighs, the more restricted one will be to certain pathways, and the less nimbly one will be able to change direction. One’s karma is, of course, a reflection of one’s previously expressed true will.

Such arguments were no doubt understood by the monk in the image at the top of this page. Although he was a Buddhist, and not an Elementalist, he would have been aware that the material world is illusory and therefore that all sensations are transitory. As such, he would have possessed a great deal of the wisdom that Elementalists aspire to.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Writing Characters of Tin

Once a character has a small amount of spiritual energy in them, they become a character of tin. This represents the next stage up the spiritual ladder from lead. As tin is brighter than lead, characters of tin are brighter than characters of lead. However, tin is still near the bottom of the vertical spectrum.

Tin is represented by the planet Jupiter. As such, it is typified by largeness. The typical character of tin is one that other people would describe as “larger than life”. In much the same way that characters of lead can be marked by being small, characters of tin can be marked by being large.

This largeness does not imply any of the other qualities typical of the higher elements. Characters of tin may be large, but they are seldom physically disciplined like the characters of iron. Rather, men of tin have big beer bellies and women of tin have gigantic breasts. The stereotypical jolly fat man is a man of tin.

Jupiter gives us the word jovial, which is the characteristic adjective of characters of tin. This joviality expresses itself as an uncomplicated sociability. Characters of tin, having advanced past the level of lead, understand that life must be enjoyed rather than merely survived. As such, they are all about the next party.

The archetypal emotion of a character of tin is joy. Whereas the character of lead is fearful and suspicious, the character of tin overflows with warmth – perhaps too much. They can be the sort of person whose good-natured naivety leads to them getting their pocket picked. They can also be the sort of person who gets a little bit too flirtatious with the waitress and so upsets their wife.

The flipside of this is guilt. Characters of tin frequently find themselves feeling guilty on account of overindulging in some passion or failing to resist some temptation. Although they’re not petty criminals like characters of lead can be, and they’re not sadistic brutes like characters of iron can be, their impulsive and passionate nature can induce them to commit practically any crime that characters of lead and iron are capable of.

The archetypal occupation for a character of tin is a publican or bartender. When surrounded by other people who are drinking booze and cutting loose, the character of tin is in their element. One can reckon their whereabouts by their booming laughter. Dancing and gambling are other favourite pastimes.

Where you won’t find them is in any occupation requiring long-term physical or intellectual discipline. The character of tin doesn’t consider themself ill-disciplined, however – they are likely to make the argument that their passions are too powerful to be readily controlled. For this reason they don’t necessarily look up to the characters of higher elements.

Characters of tin often have some rudimentary musical skills. Although they don’t have the refinement of characters of copper or the brilliance of characters of mercury, they have no shortage of passion. Sometimes they make more noise than music. A charcter of tin, then, feels right at home behind a set of drums or fronting a punk rock band.

Perhaps the greatest motivation of the character of tin is the prospect of a good hard shag. Being slightly illuminated, they are full of both passion and the lust for pleasure. As such, characters of tin fill the bordellos of the world, both as customer and vendor. Their idea of heaven is a pub full of drunk, loose, big-titted women or horse-cocked men. Concerns about class don’t really come up – characters of tin are in it for a good time, not a long time. They like to say “any hole’s a goal”.

Characters of tin tend to be more forgiving and less petty than characters of lead, but they do have a pronounced dark side. Not being illuminated to the level of iron, they don’t have any true sense of honour. As such, they are still prone to petty hatreds, only they are more likely to backstab someone socially through gossip or rumourmongering than by doing it literally.

Being emotional, characters of tin are also prone to sullenness. If there is nothing interesting happening, or if they don’t get their way for some reason, characters of tin tend to sulk. They also yield easily, although they aren’t as flighty as the characters of lead.

Most usefully from a story-telling point of view, characters of tin are vulnerable to letting their passions get on top of them. This relates not so much to violence (this is more the problem of characters of iron) but to gluttony and licentiousness. Characters of tin are often drug addicts. Much like the characters of lead, they are not particularly good at long-term thinking. So there are many of them who are alcoholics or junkies.

Characters of tin are great fun to be around when times are good, but when times get tough they tend to disappear. A character of tin, then, is the archetypal “fairweather friend”. Lacking the displine of the higher elements, the character of tin tends to cut and run. They also like to bludge.

The character of tin tends to look down on the characters of lead on account of that the latter aren’t much fun. Characters of tin might not be particularly illuminated, but they are smart enough to know that people with no moral refinement tend to cause bad times to those around them. This prejudice towards the less enlightened is a feature of all of the levels between lead and gold.

Characters of tin don’t make sophisticated distinctions between the characters of the higher elements. Although they may have a wary respect for the characters of iron on account of their fighting ability, the characters of copper, silver, mercury and gold all tend to blend together as “rich people”.

Other characters tend to look down on the character of tin for being degenerate. Because the character of tin cares about little beyond the next good time, they’re usually the sort of person who can neither impose order upon the environment around them nor upon themselves. As such, they are often physically out of shape and poorly educated, and so are not afforded great respect.

An underappreciated ability of tin is its capacity for balance. Because tin is the centrepoint between lead and iron on the spectrum of base elements, it can serve as a mediator between the base feminine and the base masculine. As such, characters of tin can be skilled at sorting out petty disagreements, usually with an appeal to have a drink and forget about it all.

Characters of tin can also be lucky. The expression ‘tinny’, to denote someone lucky, has an alchemical origin. It’s related to the idea that a gusto for life attracts Fortune to one’s side. This sentiment is the basis for the amor fati that is the essential attitude of the characters of iron.

This article is from Viktor Hellman’s The Alchemy of Character Development, the sixth book in VJM Publishing’s Writing With Psychology series. This book will show you how to use alchemy to create deep, realistic and engaging characters for your creative fiction.

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Clown World Chronicles: What Is A ‘Gutmensch’?

For Clown World to be possible, the people building it have to have popular support. It has plenty of support, of course, among the ruling elites and the great capital interests that profit from the alienation, despair and fragmentation of the people. But how does it get support from the common person, who doesn’t benefit from Clown World? This essay explains.

‘Gutmensch’ is a German term that literally means ‘good human’. It’s a pejorative term that means something akin to “do-gooder” or “goody two-shoes”.

The gutmensch is someone who tries very hard to be seen to be doing the right thing, but who lacks the intellect to actually discern what the right thing is. They are not intelligent enough for philosophy, and they are not intelligent enough to understand the material world and to extrapolate from that, and they do not have a natural moral sense. So they have to take cues from the social world.

The process of determining right from wrong by way of observing the social world is an error-strewn one that takes decades to become any good – and is inaccurate at the best of times. As such, the gutmensch learns right from wrong from learning what the authorities say it is. Their parents, the government, their church, the boss, doesn’t matter – the authorities are always right.

The great weakness of this approach, of course, is that the social world can easily be manipulated by malicious actors. Most people older than children understand that there are many malicious people out there, and that it’s common for these malicious people to seek power in institutions that give them authority over others.

By the time intelligent people are 15 years old, they have figured out that hierarchies of power attract evil people and therefore it’s unwise to ever trust police officers, politicians, psychiatrists or priests. These intelligent people naturally distrust anyone who appears motivated to exult themselves or to assert control over other people.

The gutmensch never figures this out. He will go on blindly parroting what these authority figures say as if it were the word of God. For him, social dominance hierarchies can only be climbed by competence, and people can only become authorities if they were better than others. This child-like naivety makes it possible for all kinds of malicious actors to get support from gutmenschen.

These malicious actors prey on the sheep-like nature of the gutmensch to induce him to support policies which are in the interests of those malicious actors, but not in the interests of the gutmensch. Mass immigration is the foremost example. As such, the gutmensch can be herded to his doom, like a deer driven over a cliff.

The big problem with that is that the gutmenschen take the rest of us down with them. Their overwhelming mass support for the status quo and for the established rulers of society means that, in order to effect positive change, one has to fight against society itself. The gutmensch serves as a mindless drone guarding the elites, something that has to be overcome if Clown World is to be overcome.

Another way that the gutmensch weakens society is from his fear of taboos. There are so many things that the gutmensch forbids themselves from speaking about that, sometimes, talking to them feels like talking to a religious fundamentalist. Topics of race, religion, sex and gender differences cannot be discussed, and if they can be, only the most blue-pilled, Government-approved opinions can be offered.

All these taboos have the final effect of destroying conversation and making communication more difficult. In the final analysis, the gutmensch is, despite his intentions, a destroyer.

Although the gutmensch thinks himself an upstanding citizen who wouldn’t harm anyone, he was on the front lines of the Nazi and Communist battles against their own people, comprising a large proportion of those who ratted out their neighbours. The gutmensch is capable of committing any atrocity while thinking that, because the Government approved of them, they were doing a good thing.

Fundamental to gutmensch psychology is a terror of being judged, especially of being found unworthy. This is because the gutmensch has no real self esteem, and must find it elsewhere. Because his social equals are also pathetic, the gutmensch must seek approval from authority figures. This is why he is so eager to please them.

Underneath it all, gutmenschen are massively egotistical losers, so incredibly precious that they’ll happily go along with any mob, no matter how destructive, rather than risk disapproval. In their hearts, they know they are pathetic, which is why they resent those who are not. Fundamentally, then, gutmensch mentality is a slave morality.

In most cases, gutmenschen turn out the way they do because they have lived extremely sheltered lives. The typical gutmensch will never have travelled outside of their comfort zone, much less backpacked through the third world or lived in countries where they speak another language. They have never been challenged, and as such remain men of clay.

These gutmenschen evoke plenty of hate on account of that their self-righteous moralising makes people want to punch them. These sentiments are well warranted, because it is the gutmensch who normalises every government abuse, from those of the Nazis and Communists to the War and Drugs and alcohol prohibition.

The difference between a gutmensch and a baizuo is subtle, and mostly a matter of age and education. Perhaps the best way to explain the difference is by analogy to the animal kingdom. The baizuo is like a peacock: it preens, it appears vain, and its elaborate virtue signalling does more harm than good. The gutmensch, by contrast, is a simple herd animal. It doesn’t care about anything other than fitting in.

This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.

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The Political Alliance That Would Terrify The New Zealand Establishment

Four months out from a General Election, people start talking about potential political alliances. Once it becomes clear that certain parties are unlikely to clear the 5% threshold, teaming up becomes the obvious way forwards. Although most discussions of this nature are unfruitful, there’s one option that would upend the New Zealand political order.

The Establishment parties are National on the right, Labour on the left and New Zealand First in the centre. These parties are full of the old, mature people who want to maintain the status quo but with slight adjustments. These parties represent those who already have it good, so they most they want to do is tinker.

From this cozy arrangement came the Alliance Party, which provided an alternative on the left. This alternative left is now represented by the Green Party, who developed out of the Alliance (although the Greens are arguably now part of the neoliberal globalist establishment). The other alternative parties are ACT on the right and The Opportunities Party in the centre.

These three parties are the only ones to have consistently offered meaningful alternatives to the status quo over the past quarter century.

The basic logic of an ACT-TOP alliance is that the two parties share many sentiments, both moral and economic. Both parties oppose cannabis prohibition, both are in favour of euthanasia rights and abortion rights. Both appeal primarily to young and educated people. An alliance between the two might allow for them to come close to the 5% threshold on their own merits, without needing Seymour to win in Epsom.

This hints at the idea that gives National and Labour party strategists sleepless nights: a grand alliance between all of the anti-Establishment parties.

As it is, the anti-Establishment forces are so disorganised that the major parties can easily knock them out. All that Labour and the Greens have to do to keep the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party from threatening their position is to adopt ALCP policies as they become popular, and mainstream voters will vote for the established left parties so as to “not waste a vote”.

Likewise, National can keep ACT and the New Conservatives small by adopting the most popular of their policies. If either of them have a policy that attracts more than half a percent of votes on its own (which is about what the ALCP wins), National can and will simply adopt it themselves, leaving the smaller parties holding their dicks.

What would really put the shits up the Establishment would be if all of these minor parties, instead of letting themselves get divided and conquered, came together as a single bloc. This anti-Establishment bloc would unite on the basis that a new political order is of primary importance, with the precise details being secondary (note that the New Conservatives, not wanting change, are not part of this).

Many people want alternative politics, but are put off the Greens because they know that if the Greens get enough to get into Parliament, they will inevitably bring rubbish like Marama Davidson and Golriz Ghahraman in with them. They are also put off ACT because ACT’s unrepentant neoliberalism seems like a recipe for more of the suffering that we’re already enduring.

This alliance would assuage both concerns. Not only would the Greens be limited to a few members (or, better yet, excluded altogether), but the presence of centrist elements would help moderate Seymour’s soulless “show me the money” hypercapitalism. Mirroring this, Seymour would provide a sober restraint to the potential kookery from the other parties.

It’s worth noting here that, should it be decided the Greens really are an Establishment party, it’s possible to find an element of the alternative left elsewhere. Amanda Vickers is intelligent, has developed a respected social media profile and has done good work for the Social Credit Party, which once was strong enough to get over 20% in the 1981 General Election. Either she, the Social Credit Party leader Chris Leitch, or both, could combine with the best ACT and TOP candidates to create an Alternative A-Team.

Such an alliance would benefit from the leadership of Seymour, who is highly respected among Generation X and younger voters (some go as far as to declare him the true Leader of the Opposition). It could count on the current numbers of votes achieved by all the constituent parties (ACT got 13,075 votes in 2017, and TOP 63,260), plus two major groups of new voters.

The first are those put off from supporting alternative parties by the 5% threshold. This threshold is a hurdle so high that only three new parties have surmounted it in 24 years – the Alliance/Greens, New Zealand First and ACT, and the latter now relies on winning the Epsom electorate for any Parliamentary representation (1).

This division of alternative forces across three or more parties severely weakens them, and the 5% threshold, like a battlefield reaver, finishes them off. An ACT-TOP-Socred alliance would obviate any realistic fear of inducing wasted votes – even if they did not get 5%, they would still have Epsom, and so could realistically count on at least four or five seats to begin with.

The second major group of likely new voters are those who are put off by all the retards in the other parties. Characters like Davidson and Ghahraman, although they are idolised by Marxist malcontents, place a hard upper limit on how much support their parties can ever get from the public at large. The vast majority of voters listen to them and are repulsed.

A genuine Alternative Alliance with a top seven of David Seymour, Geoff Simmons, Amanda Vickers, some intelligent young candidates like TOP’s Joshua Love and Matthew Pottinger, and rounded off by ACT’s deputy Beth Houlbrooke, would have a minimum of objectionable weirdos while still maintaining a firm anti-Establishment line. The coming of such a movement would land tsunami-like upon the New Zealand Establishment.

This would not require the dismantling of the existing parties, merely their temporarily coming together for the sake of the General Election. Then the nature of the alliance could be revisited.

(1) This article initially stated that ACT has never cleared the 5% threshold. Credit to Stephen Berry for the correction.

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