philosophy – Page 123

VJMP Reads: Julius Evola’s Ride the Tiger VII

This reading continues on from here.

Part Five of Ride The Tiger is called ‘Dissolution of Consciousness and Relativism’ and is comprised of two essays.

The first of these is called ‘The Procedures of Modern Science’. Here Evola begins by describing how the Western idea of Western supremacy upholds itself by appeal to its achievements in materialist science. Evola thinks that this is a gross error, and goes as far as to say that “None οf modern science has the slightest value as knowledge.” It is concerned with statistics and probability rather than truth.

The cult of scientific objectivity that Evola decries is all too willing to discard currently-held theories in favour of ones that, if adopted, provide temporary gains in terms of political power. This supposed objectivity, instead of leading to ever-refining truth, has merely caused science to lose itself chasing shadows. Einstein’s theory of relativity comes in for special criticism, being notable only for producing the bomb.

Scientism has only led to a kind of cult of quantity, which has made people obsessed with numbers and formulas and abstractions, so that we have forgotten what reality actually is and what it’s about. It’s a false logic, and it’s grossly unsuitable for anyone with spiritual pretensions.

The twentieth essay is called ‘Covering Up Nature – Phenomenology’ and continues the theme of the inadequacy of the scientific culture. Science hasn’t really got us any closer to the nature of reality, and each new “advance” merely takes us further away. After all, the world of our actual experience is still made up of fire, air, earth and water, and mathematical abstractions tell us nothing about how to deal with these.

Modern man is destructive because scientism has conditioned him to see everything as soulless. Our compulsory education system brainwashes children with this perspective from when they are very small. Even worse is the popular delusion that science can replace religion in the sense that it might give humanity a promised path to future happiness. This delusion has caused much misery.

Alchemically, this essay continues the theme of decrying the men of silver, whose preoccupations have not and can not lead to spiritual absolution. Evola gives credit to the concerns of the men of silver in so far as the discipline of mathematics cultivates clarity of thought, but all of these intellectualisms ignore the spiritual. Once one has seen the “great illusion” it’s apparent that science cannot be sufficient to solve human needs.

The twenty-first essay is called ‘Sickness and the European Culture’ and comes back to the subject of European decadence. This essay is very short, at only three pages.

Here Evola reinforces the contention that European culture has become sick because it has lost its spiritual centre. With no shared sense of spiritual tradition, the forces holding society together have weakened, and some parts of it have broken away. The tragedy of World War II is considered a natural consequence of this process of technical and scientific advancement at the expense of spiritual knowledge.

Part of the problem, Evola holds, is that politics has become separated from an intellectual and cultural class that, in its conceit, has decided it’s above the political. This is not the fault of that class so much as it is a symptom of the collapse of the unifying, transcendent and spiritual ideas that lie underneath cultural expressions such as politics and the arts.

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

The Masculine Approach, the Feminine Approach, and the Four Elementary Perceptions

If one wishes to divide the world into two halves, a problem immediately arises: on what basis does one make the division? There seem to be an infinite number of dimensions that a division can be made along. This essay argues that there are two orthogonal, fundamentally different ways to divide the world in two, and this leads to four elementary perceptions.

In its initial state, perception is untrammelled. When consciousness is united with God, one is aware of everything. From this state, the only way that change is possible is for this perfect perception to become occluded somewhere. Somewhere, consciousness must turn to unconsciousness, light to dark, warm to cold.

There are two ways to look at this inevitable fall from union with God. The first way is to simply perceive the change; the second way is to judge the change. This dichotomy is true of all distinctions between feminine and masculine, as the feminine is associated with the perception end of the perceiving-judging spectrum, and the masculine with the judging end.

This first way, making the choice to perceive, is the feminine way. This way divides the world into light and dark or hot and cold, where no judgment is made about one of the two being better than the other. The feminine way of dividing the world does so horizontally, in that the halves are seen as interdependent and as feminine and masculine.

The second way, making the choice to judge, is the masculine way. This way divides the world into good and bad, where good and bad are different to (but overlapping with) the feminine division of yin and yang. This way of dividing the world does so vertically, in that one half is judged to be worth more than the other half. Good is set above bad.

These two perceptions are just perceptions. Neither of them is right or wrong, and that isn’t important in any case. What is important is when these perceptions are useful, because either is useful in some situations and not in others.

Masculine is good when you have just come inside from the rain. Then, masculine is a warm cup of coffee. Feminine is good when you have just come inside from a hot day of playing sport in the Sun. Then, feminine is a cool beer. So either masculine or feminine can be good or bad in the moment, without a moral judgment needing to be made.

Likewise, judging is good when deciding whether to let a person into your house. It’s important to make sure that a person is not bad before opening your doors to them. Perceiving is good when trying to enjoy a piece of music, because it’s enough to just experience the sound and to let oneself by raised and lowered by it. Judging might take the fun out of it.

So the decision whether to perceive or to judge in any given moment depends on the environment a person is in and the situation around them. Generally speaking, if things are relaxed then people are inclined to perceive and if they are stressful people are inclined to judge. It also depends on inherent personality characteristics: women are more likely to break towards perceiving if in doubt, while men are more likely to break towards judging.

In all, this means that there are four different perspectives that one can take to anything in the world. Any other thing can be treated as either good, evil, yang or yin, depending on whether one chooses to primarily judge it or to primarily perceive it. Whichever of the four is chosen only makes sense in reference to the other three not chosen: bad is non-perceptive, non-good; good is non-perceptive, non-bad; feminine is non-judgmental, non-masculine, and masculine is non-judgmental, non-masculine.

This way of thinking (of dividing four elementary perceptions into two groups of two, based on approach) represents a middle point between the vertical, masculine logic of clay-iron-silver-gold and the horizontal, feminine logic of earth-water-air-fire. It might therefore claim to be a way of thinking that represented a higher degree of balance than the other two.

It also leads to them both after a small amount of extrapolation, because the distinction between good and evil is essentially identical to the distinction between precious (gold and silver) and base (iron and clay). Here gold distinguishes itself from silver by being double good, because silver is relatively bad as far as precious elements go. Likewise, iron is good in comparison to clay, because it is hard and can be used in tools, and is therefore relatively good as far as base elements go.

Likewise, the distinction between masculine and feminine is essentially identical to the distinction between warm (fire and air) and cold (water and earth). Here, fire distinguishes itself from air by being double masculine (i.e. it is hot and dry, not just hot), and earth distinguishes itself from water by being double feminine (i.e. it is cold and unyielding, not just cold).

How to Tell If A Political Ideology Has Failed

The genesis of the Soviet failure was the failure of their philosophers to accurately understand, and to account for, human nature

All political philosophies, when first expounded, claim to have a special and unique insight into the truth of human nature. This claim is the basis for the legitimacy of each one. However, this also gives us a limit point at which a political ideology can be said to have failed – when those expounding it will be trying to change human nature instead of change their philosophy.

Machiavelli was correct – human nature never changes. It is the one constant through which the rest of the world can be understood. Human nature is the same in all times and places and therefore anyone who understands it might as well be able to see into the future. This gives immense power to those who do understand human nature. They are able to flow with the waves of it, instead of being dashed upon the rocks.

Communism failed because it did not account for the masculinity within human nature. The assumption was that, after the structures of cruelty and capitalism were dismantled, we would all go back to a bonobo-style level of caring, sharing and free love. Everyone would have what they needed because those able to provide it would simply do so out of inherent kindness.

It did not account for the chimpanzee within us, the hypermasculinist who desires verticalisation. The fact is that resources are extremely limited in a state of Nature, which means that when times of scarcity roll around, some have to go without. There is an immense evolutionary incentive, for obvious reasons, for social creatures such as humans to evolve to fight like hell rather than go without, and so primates have evolved dominance hierarchies.

This means that a state of perfect solidarity, and full sharing totally free of resentment, is unnatural. Humans are a hierarchical creature in a state of Nature, and the attempt to reform humanity and the nature of humanity – as if it was a field that could simply be sown with a higher grade of crop – was the folly that killed a hundred million people last century.

Nazism failed for similar reasons. Their great error was to assume that the nature of the German people was more morally upright than what it really was, which created a cognitive dissonance that found resolution in the scapegoating of the Jews. Externalising the blame for personal failure is typical of the sort of person who finds merit in Nazism.

Neo-Communism, in its manifestation as social justice warrior culture, is failing because it failed to account for how unwilling young people are to be programmed into parroting utter bullshit, especially when that bullshit denies aspects of human nature that even children can observe. The neo-communist attempt to reform human nature into some kind of non-racist, non-sexist and non-judgmental perfect niceness is doomed to fail, as all people smarter than dogs can see the distinctions between the various types of humans everywhere they go.

Instead of accepting that the bonds of solidarity and philia that held society together have now been shattered by relentless waves of mass immigration and the ruthless application of neo-liberal ideology to every facet of life, the neo-communists try to brainwash everyone into denying their natural instincts by browbeating them into submission with terms like “Racist!”. This is clear evidence of failure.

Likewise, the neo-nazism of our age serves to misdirect blame rather than accept that its conception of human nature is inaccurate. The neo-nazis often have intelligent and accurate criticisms about how the current system has failed, and how the Marxists have failed, but their downfall lies (as with the Marxists) with their solutions.

The neo-nazi solution is still, as it was, to fundamentally change human nature by exterminating those who don’t fit in, the belief being that the remainder will become something like the perfect human. This was, and remains, a failed philosophy for the reason that human nature does not and will not change in response to human meddling.

Liberal democratic capitalism, for all of its flaws, tried to change human nature much less than either Nazism or Communism, and that’s why it defeated them both last century. The Anglo-American system accepted from the beginning that Nature will throw up a wide range of variance among her children, an acceptance made easier by the brilliant insights of Charles Darwin into the subject.

This meant that the Anglo-Americans, and those influenced by them, focused on building a system that would accommodate the widest variance of human behaviour. Their version of liberal democratic capitalism was able to account for both noble and debased natures, and find a place for both to contribute, meaning that it wasted much less energy on fighting itself and imposing order upon itself, relative to the competing philosophies.

The Anglo-American system deserves much criticism, particularly when it comes to how willing it is to sell its own people for small amounts of money, but it is less bad than anything hitherto attempted, on account of it making more accurate assumptions about human nature. This has minimised the desire of its political rulers to attempt to reshape human nature, which has minimised the risk of gulags and gas chambers.

Future political philosophies, when they arise, will not and must not be mere throwbacks to the 20th century way of doing things. The political philosophies of the 21st century will take into account an extra century’s worth of insights into the reality of human nature, and the reality of the Nature that spawned us, and they will be more accurate and more humane as a consequence.

The risk of the 21st century is that this new psychological knowledge inspires new attempts to remodel human nature under the delusion that “we know enough now to get it right this time.” The possibility of mass non-consensual medicating with psychiatric drugs cannot be discounted, and neither can some kind of virtual reality system created with the intent of brainwashing people more effectively than ever before.

The Ultimate Power is to Make Peace With Death

Socrates was not wrong when he said “those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.” The best thing a person can ever do is to accustom themselves to the fact that they are mortal and therefore that time on this planet is limited. To the extent that this can be achieved, a person can be liberated from a tremendous range of miseries.

All fear ultimately comes from a fear of death. The reason why pain is frightening is because we have evolved an instinctual appreciation that pain is a harbinger of death. When you are in pain, it means that Death has you in its sights. Pain gives us energy because we can instinctively appreciate the seriousness of the threat.

When kids fight each other in the playground, and they learn to force each other’s wills through violence, the natural fear of death possessed by each child makes this easy. A little bit of pain from a twisted arm, in the mind of someone young and inexperienced, is tantamount to a near-death experience, and so compliance is easily given. A little bit of social disapproval in the form of a stern teacher likewise.

It’s expected that adults will be a bit braver and harder to manipulate. Adults have had longer to come to terms with death, and in that time they might have overcome their fear of it. Failing that, they might have learned to behave in ways that hide their fear of it. Failing that, they might at least have found a way to trick themselves into going forward with some semblance of dignity.

The less fear of death any given adult has, the more powerful they will be. This is fundamentally a spiritual power, but it works its magic by way of its gradual effect on the people around its possessor (much like gold does). Someone unafraid of death will have charisma, they will inspire confidence, people will follow them, and people will respect them for having found existential solace. It’s a power more subtle than silver, but at the same time one with a much greater reach.

On the other hand, no-one is expected to make peace with death, or at least not entirely, for there is no public consensus of any kind as to what befalls consciousness upon the expiration of the physical body. Conviction in the matter of what does befall consciousness is reserved for a very few, most of whom are readily and fairly dismissed as some kind of religious fanatic who is merely parroting what they have been brainwashed with.

The gnosis of those who have seen beyond and know what lies beyond death is almost never accepted by the masses, and for good reason: the vast bulk of the people claiming to know are patently scammers, and so distrust is necessary and natural. Selling tickets to an afterlife in exchange for worldly goods has always been the default con job of the black priesthood, and one that may even have been practised in prehistory.

The Tao teaches us that, even in the time of the total triumph of yin, there is invariably a tiny speck of yang that will grow to impose a new order upon things. In a similar manner, all of these religious scammers have, in common, certain insights about the nature of life as a material being that remain true despite the horseshit layered on top of them. We all die, and we’re all afraid of it, and we’re all willing to take action to ameliorate that fear.

This column is willing to give you gold for free: once you make peace with death you are invincible, for all psychological weakness flows directly from the fear of it. Without a fear of death one cannot be threatened with torture, because death would simply mean a sweet release from such, and no other physical threat is as bad as torture. Without a fear of death, one cannot be intimidated in any way, for there is no reason to bow the knee to an oppressor if they are not able to materially hurt you.

A person who has made peace with their mortality will stand, on the metaphysical plane, like a great boulder of granite, which cannot be moved or damaged. The winds and waves of fear and dread will not impact such a person; they will barely change the expression on the face of one. A person who has made peace with death knows that there’s nothing more but to sit back and watch as the wave breaks upon the shore. The dissolution of the wave is something to be experienced, not feared.

However, there’s a risk.

The more you look into the face of death, the deeper you look into the void. What happens then is not necessarily up to you, not even with all the will in the world. As Nietzsche warned us, the void will also look into you. When it does, you might come to decide that life itself is evil on account of the inevitable suffering it promises and that death is to be welcomed and encouraged as a release from same and as a reunion with God.

And at that point it’s extremely easy to make a terrible mistake.

Do you have the courage to look into the very back of the void, with nothing more than a hope that one will be rewarded? This column can give no assurance that any person who does look will be the better off for it. Madness is an ever-present threat for those who do, for one might find that one’s will disintegrates under the weight of this hidden knowledge. All we can say is that one ought to prepare oneself thoroughly, for one is staking a claim to godhood and ought to expect that it will be commensurately challenging.