The Basic Logic Of Alternative Centrism

The basic logic of alternative centrism is that all other political positions have failed, but that they were tried for logical reasons, and that if those reasons are understood a composite political philosophy can be created that preserves the good aspects of all the previous positions, while avoiding the bad aspects.

The first part of alternative centrism is alternative. This means alternative to The Establishment: in this context the globalist political establishment that has ruled the world since 1945. According to this view, the mainstream left and right parties are just wings of one Establishment that co-operates with itself while creating the illusion of competing.

The reason why the Establishment is opposed is simply because it has failed. The standard of living inherited by the younger generations today is far, far lower than that enjoyed by the Boomers. As such, the younger generations feel no need to be grateful for the status quo. To the contrary – they seek to dismantle it. Sometimes this means to reduce the Establishment to zero; sometimes this means to reverse what the Establishment has done to the people. In either case it means seeking an alternative to how things are usually done.

The second part of alternative centrism is centrism. This means centrist in comparison to the left and the right.

This centrism is – and this must be understood – an alternative centrism, not an establishment centrism. In other words, it’s not an insipid compromise between two weak and irrational positions. The alternative centrist is happy to have left-wing attitudes more extreme than the leftists, or right-wing attitudes more extreme than the rightists. The most important thing is not whether an attitude is consistent with a position on a wing, but whether it is consistent with reason and with the logic of the situation at hand.

A person is an alternative centrist, then, if they can answer Yes to two questions: Do you think the political establishment has failed and needs to be replaced? Do you think the alternative left and alternative right are both dangerous extremists?

The existing political establishment is understood to be comprised of the winners of World War Two, i.e. mostly capitalists and communists. This means that the political establishment is understood to consist of right-wing elements and left-wing elements in roughly equal measure. A person cannot be an alternative centrist if their struggle is against one of rightism or leftism exclusively, or even predominately. It has to be appreciated that both sides contain evil. Alternative centrism embodies Solzhenitsyn when he wrote “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

The alternative centrist understanding of history is elaborated upon in other chapters. Here, it’s enough to say that the alternative centrist considers modern political history to have tried five political positions, all of which have failed: establishment right, establishment left, establishment centre, alternative right and alternative left. However, these positions have not been tried and failed because they were completely false, or because their proponents were stupid and evil.

Alternative centrism holds that each of the previous five positions has an internal logic suited for specific circumstances. The error lies in assuming that this logic applies to all circumstances.

The basic logic of alternative centrism is that one can apply the logic of any of the previous five positions, in whole or in part, in combination or individually, if the specific circumstances permit. Therefore, the alternative centrist seeks to understand the motivations, intentions and aspirations of those who promulgate the previous five positions. Knowing this, they can fluidly switch mindset to whatever is appropriate at the time.

Much of the rest of the first part of this book, then, examines the other five political positions from an alternative centrist point of view. This means from a point of view that sees both the strengths and the weaknesses of all five positions, and the psychology of the supporters of each of those positions.

The second part of this book examines the various policy areas that are influenced by political position, and the alternative centrist view on each of these. In principle, the details of every policy area vary depending on the underlying political position taken. As such, this second part of the book covers a wide range of topics.

The third part of the book deals with the realpolitik of alternative centrism, in particular who constitutes the ingroup and who the outgroup, and how to deal with both. This part explains that alternative centrism is necessarily a revolutionary libertarian nationalist movement, by virtue of its being anti-establishment, the establishment being a status-quo-supporting authoritarian globalist movement.

The ultimate aim of this book is to elucidate a political philosophy fit for the 21st Century and beyond. The belief is that alternative centrism can not only meet the political desires of the vast majority of the population, but also provide a methodology for managing society without the volatility of the previous five positions.

The approach detailed above ought to lead to order, freedom, peace, truth and justice and avoid stagnation, chaos, degeneracy, cruelty and stupidity more effectively than any of the five previous positions could ever hope to do.

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Some Very Basic Advice For The Mentally Ill, From A Veteran Of The Mental Health System!

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of my entry into the New Zealand mental health system. It’s been a frustrating and horrifying journey, a blend of Brave New World and Dante’s Inferno. Because much of what mental health experts have told me in this time has turned out to be false, I have had to teach myself about psychiatry to a major extent. If I could summarise what I have learned about dealing with a psychiatric condition oneself, I would give two basic pieces of advice.

First, understand nervous system regulation.

Modern psychiatric theory has abandoned the chemical imbalance model for the traumagenic neurodevelopmental (TN) model. This means that no well-informed person still believes that mental illness is mostly caused by chemical imbalances that can only be corrected by expensive pharmaceuticals.

According to the TN model, early childhood trauma plays the major role in mental illness by causing the brain to develop in unnatural ways. The brains of highly traumatised people tend to respond much differently to stress: some anxious and neurotic types powerfully over-react, some bluntened and depressed types under-react. Such abnormal responses to stress can make it much harder to live a normal life.

This model has implications for those who have, until now, believed that their condition was the result of something intrinsically wrong with them mentally or spiritually. It turns out that most psychiatric conditions are actually physiological in nature.

Somatic symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, nausea and migranes are often stress responses, and signals that the nervous system is already hyperaroused. Anxiety and depression are common consequences of suffering this hyperarousal for an extended period of time. As such, keeping the nervous system well-regulated is crucial for lessening the impacts of most psychiatric conditions.

The best way to do this is to avoid stress, which is not always possible. The grim truth is that most stresses are forced on people by the needs to find food and shelter. Nonetheless, there’s a lot each individual can do to minimise the stress on their nervous system.

Learning to meditate is one of the best things that anyone with a psychiatric condition can do. Cultivating the ability to not physiologically react to distressing thoughts is as good as taking any pharmaceutical. Dedicated meditation practice can downregulate the nervous system more effectively and more permanently than anything else.

Another great move is learning to avoid toxic narcissists. This is also not always possible, because of family and work obligations. But it’s very useful to learn the typical early warning signs of toxic narcissism, so that those displaying it can be shunned as early as possible.

Second, understand the importance of connection. This means connection at every level: to family, to community and to the divine.

The simplest and easiest way to feel connection is through one’s family. But, if you have a psychiatric condition, chances are high that your family environment is psychotogenic. If so, then interacting with your family can add to the stress and nervous system dysregulation. This is where the community comes in.

Connection to the community is relatively easy, but here a person has to be realistic. A mental illness will mean that certain avenues into the community will be closed off. However, it will also mean that solidarity can be easier to find in some other ways. It’s very easy to feel solidarity with other people who have had to deal with the psychiatric system. Groups organised on this basis that meet physically can be challenging to find if one doesn’t live in a city, but there are numerous online groups devoted to every psychiatric condition.

Divine connection is harder to find. The main problem here is that Westerners have been lied to about spirituality for centuries. The native Western spiritual traditions were destroyed by the coming of Christianity, so that when Christianity died, we were left with only memories of the divine. When the European spiritual traditions, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, were lost, the Western soul was lost to confusion.

The answer here is a combination of meditation and spiritual sacraments. Correct meditation will silence the mundane thoughts, and correct spiritual sacrament use will bring the glory of the divine back to consciousness. This combination of meditation and spiritual sacrament use is the basic formula espoused by some New Age religions such as Elementalism.

Cultivating a divine connection can help create a sense of belonging, which many people do not otherwise have. It’s common to feel like an alien on this planet and in this society. Meditating or taking spiritual sacraments with friends or family can create powerful feelings of connection with the rest of reality.

Society might never have been more mentally ill than today. However, it has (probably) never been easier for an individual with a mental illness to cope with it. Advanced knowledge of the causes and treatment of mental illness is now available through the traumagenic neurodevelopmental theory, and communities of meditators or spiritual sacrament users have never been easier to find.

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Who Is My Guru?

Recently I asked the readers and viewers of VJM Publishing material to ask me any question they liked, in the fields of psychology, politics or spirituality, and I would answer it. The question answered in this essay – and I apologise for not being able to remember who asked it! – is who my guru is.

There’s a very simple answer to that question: Socrates.

There were few positive male role models in my childhood environment. I was the son of a gang member, and various uncles were also gang members, drug dealers or junkies. I was fortunate enough to have an excellent grandfather, who taught me a basic sense of honour and decency, but my philosophical ambitions soon brought me beyond what my family could fulfill. I needed a guru.

My male teachers at school were generally decent men, typical of the high-trust society that was 20th Century Nelson. But they weren’t gurus. The pains of life etched in their faces were understandable even to a child. Clearly, they were struggling through life much like I was, and needed a guru much like I did.

In Classics class during my final year of high school, one assigned topic was the trial and execution of Socrates. We learned how Socrates brought wisdom to the ungrateful masses of Athens, who eventually voted to have him killed. His form of execution was to drink a deadly hemlock tea. As I first learned the story, I presumed that he would refuse to do this, but he did, reasoning that it was not only his duty but he wasn’t afraid of death anyway.

I was awestruck.

Soon I developed a total fascination with this feat. This equanimity in the face of death seemed superhuman to me. Everything I had believed – or been taught – about human nature suggested that death was the most terrifying thing possible, the darkest of all mysteries, the termination of all of one’s dreams.

Everyone around me behaved as if scared stupid of the subject, never speaking about it. Socrates’s example proved that man need not fear death, and not in the delusional, heroin-high manner of the Christians and other religious fanatics. It was possible to die without fearing death simply through philosophy.

About a decade after I finished high school, I had lived a full life. I had earned a couple of degrees, been around the world a few times, even been married and divorced. The problem of death still plagued me though. Haunted me. What was the point of any of this, if I was doomed to die and all of it would be forgotten?

Here Socrates still acted as the guru. It was through studying him, and his disciple in Plato, that I came to realise the role of the Eleusinian Mysteries in the philosophy of fearlessness in the face of death. These Mysteries were famous in ancient Greece for alleviating the participants’ fear of death; Plato and Cicero wrote about their effects, and Aristotle, Epictetus, Plutarch, Alcibiades, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Augustus, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Julian were known to have been initiated.

Through learning about these mysteries, I came upon psilocybin mushrooms – believed by Terence McKenna to be the main psychoactive ingredient of the kykeon drunk by all participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries. This led me to taking psilocybin mushrooms myself and undergoing a total spiritual transformation at age 27, something discussed at length on this website.

Later, when I came to think more about politics, Socrates was still the guru, being the hero of Republic and Plato’s explication of political reality. Socrates’s unsurpassed example of honest reason as a tool to uncover the truth of political questions, despite opposition from liars and fools, inspired me. Like Socrates, but to a lesser extent, I have also been banned, cancelled and suppressed. I am proud to have followed in Socrates’s example!

Even now, I can still gain great insight about the nature of the soul from reading Phaedo. Socrates’s description of philosophy as preparation for death sets my entire life into a perspective that makes sense and gives it meaning. I might be almost 30 years older now than when I first read about Socrates, but his example of assuaging fear of death through pure reason appeals to me just as much today.

Many people think I am crazy for turning my energies away from making money and turning them towards spirituality instead. They don’t understand why a person would meditate or do psychedelics at all, let alone do little else for over a decade. Why philosophise at all, when there is money to be made?

I do it because of the example of relentless pursuit of truth set by Socrates, who is to me the most admirable man of all. This has led me to the spiritual beliefs expressed in Elementalism and in the essays on this website.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
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An Elementalist Interpretation Of Marilyn Manson’s ‘Wormboy’

‘Wormboy’ is one of Marilyn Manson’s creepiest songs. From the album Antichrist Superstar, it covers typical Manson subjects like death, despair and psychological destruction, possibly in the context of a person who has discovered that Christianity has driven them to ruin. There’s more to these lyrics than goth themes, though. Buried within is some deep esoteric wisdom.

One line in particular stands out, and demands explication from an Elementalist perspective: “When you get to heaven, you will wish you’re in hell.” This is an extraordinarily strange line, but from an Elementalist perspective it makes perfect sense.

The Christian heaven (Manson’s mockery is limited to Christianity; he avoids mentioning Eastern religions) is supposed to be a place of perfect and eternal bliss. For many centuries, ignorant fools have yearned for this heaven, believing it to be a place where they are liberated from all the sufferings of the Earth. But as the lyrics of ‘Wormboy’ suggest, things aren’t that simple, especially when it comes to Christianity.

From this eternal bliss in heaven narrative, one question naturally arises: why would someone wish they were in hell?

Mainstream philosophy has difficulty grappling with such a question. Because even our metaphysical thought is infused with materialist logic, it’s hard to imagine someone desiring anything for non-materialist reasons. Thus, we understand the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. But we don’t understand spiritual motivations nearly as well.

As such, we can understand what would motivate a person to want to get to heaven. The eternal bliss of heaven seems like a never-ending Oxycontin buzz to materialist cultures such as ours. We can all understand wanting pure pleasure.

Most people associate heaven with the ultimate final goal, the victory condition of life. If owning a home with a million dollars in the bank equals success in the physical plane, getting to one of the heaven realms equals success in the metaphysical plane. To get to heaven is to win at life. So why would a person who got there wish that they were in hell?

An Elementalist can readily explain: boredom.

The Fourth Tenet of Elementalism holds that the natural state of consciousness is one of perfect bliss. Following from this tenet, Elementalism teaches that this perfect bliss soon became excruciatingly boring. This boredom was what motivated God (understood in Elementalism to be the same thing as consciousness) to dream up something other than perfect bliss.

Elemental Elementalism 21.2 states: “It was in order to alleviate boredom that God forgot some of Godself, and, in so doing so, dreamed up the Great Fractal.” All of the various worlds in existence were dreamed up in order to alleviate the boredom of eternal bliss.

This includes the lowest of the hell realms.

It’s hard to realise, while on Earth, that any world must eventually become boring after enough time spent there. Earth is such a desperately miserable place that the vast majority of beings who incarnate here come to wish they were somewhere nicer. So, for the vast majority of Earthlings, the entire will is focused on getting to heaven. But when you get to heaven, you’ll get so bored that you will wish you’re in hell.

Infinite suffering is preferable to infinite boredom. At least infinite suffering has variety. Being forced to endure the infinite non-variety of the highest of the heaven realms is a form of suffering that is, in its own way, greater than the suffering of even the lowest of the hell realms.

So few of us appreciate the magnitude of the disappointment that awaits us in heaven!

Appreciating facts as esoteric as these is the preserve of a small number. Marilyn Manson may have seen aspects of reality that very few other humans have seen, and encoded references to this arcane knowledge in the lyrics of his songs.

It has long been known that Marilyn Manson is a fan of esotericism, and references to that are everywhere in his lyrics. Could it be that Manson himself has experienced, on occasion, such perfect bliss that he understands that there’s more to life than mere pleasure? If so, does it mean that Manson has cleared the Third Hurdle, transcended egotheism, and become a Luciferian?

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

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