the human condition – Page 43

Understanding The Coomer Meme

A new meme has swept across cyberspace in recent weeks. Called the Coomer, it depicts a balding social reject with bloodshot eyes and a massively outsized right arm. This essay explains how the Coomer meme came to prominence, and what it means.

Ever more frequently, we are hearing reports of people being alarmed about Internet pornography. Politicians all around the world are suggesting measures to combat this supposed new scourge, one that is apparently especially dangerous for young people. The image portrayed is one of miserable degenerates, as hopelessly addicted to jerking off as other men are to heroin.

Enter the Coomer.

The Coomer is a figure of mockery. He has completely lost control of himself. His eyes are baggy, reflecting the fact he was up all night jerking it. The Coomer no longer has any interest in social relations or the political environment in which he moves. All he lives for is to bust another nut. Consequently, he represents a wretched figure, almost vampire-like in his detachment from the outside world.

The Coomer meme is actually based on solid scientific grounds. Not only is it entirely possible to get addicted to masturbation, but it’s also possible to overstimulate yourself to the point where everything else has less impact. This creates a kind of amotivational syndrome where nothing is stimulating enough to motivate action – except for more porn (and more extreme porn). It’s very similar to the amotivational syndromes that can arise from excessive stimulation from anything.

Those promoting the Coomer meme are the usual trolls and windup merchants, but there’s a strong sense of what Rick Giles would call Dignity Culture among them. It might sound astonishing to some, but the ease and openness of modern sexual relations have led many to become bored (or even disgusted) with the idea of casual sex, and many of these people have then become celibate.

A common experience among men who become celibate, especially if they had previously had intense engagement with women, is that it feels much like giving up any other drug addiction. Withdrawal eventually gives way to an exhilarating sense of freedom. After all, much of the pleasure of making love comes simply from oxytocin and dopamine release, and experiences as intense as orgasm can easily lead to psychological dependence.

On the surface level, then, the Coomer meme serves as a light-hearted warning about the pitfalls of excessive porn consumption. On a deeper level, the Coomer meme is a satirical jibe at the materialism and hedonism of our age. In a world where God is still dead, finding a higher meaning is impossible. Therefore, there is no motivation to strive. Following one’s basest instincts towards the crudest pleasures is the order of the day.

Many young people have become aware that the problems of previous generations have been caused, to a major extent, by a lack of spirituality. The capitalist system that has wrecked communities and environments all over the world has been powered by an acquisitiveness that itself is fuelled by spiritual ignorance. Poking fun at the Coomer is a way that this awareness manifests.

The Coomer is an archetypal figure that warns against the consequences of sex addiction and genital worship. Much like Tolkien’s Gollum, whose obsession with the One Ring reduced him to a wraith-like figure, the Coomer is a pitiful creature. Invoking him serves to ward off addictions to pornography and the slack-jawed sedation that comes from oxytocin overload, a phenomenon known as “cumbrain”.

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Civilisation Is An Act of Alchemy

The art of alchemy is the art of transmuting base elements into precious ones. On the personal level, a successful alchemist will transmute their own baser nature into something that is in tune with God. As above, so below: such a process also occurs on the collective level. Civilisation itself is an act of alchemy.

The main life objective for any spiritual person is to overcome their raw animal instincts, especially when those instincts cause suffering to other sentient beings. The instincts to dominate and destroy, and to kill and conquer, are controlled by the spiritual person so that they don’t harm anyone. The spiritual man seeks to impose order upon the chaos of his soul.

Chaos, in this sense, represents the vital biological energies and instincts that have been shaped by evolution to meet survival and reproduction challenges, and which would have found expression with or without consciousness. Chaos represents the workings of Nature in raw form.

As awesome as the workings of Nature in raw form may be, they don’t take into account the suffering of conscious beings. Nature is famously indifferent to that. In a state of Nature, men fight and kill each other over food and territory and women, and survival to adulthood is rare. The spiritual impulse is the impulse to transcend and to overcome this.

Transcending and overcoming is the reason why so many religious traditions practice some form of abstinence. To fast is to learn to go without food, which is to learn to be at peace with one’s instincts to eat. To be celibate is to learn to go without sex, with is to learn to be at peace with one’s instincts to reproduce. Admonitions against violence and greed are likewise intended to encourage people to go against their savage natures.

It’s also why many religious traditions practice repetitive tasks, such as Buddhism with meditation, which requires a person to sit still for some time. If a person can learn physical discipline, then they can try to learn mental discipline, and if they can learn that, then they can try to learn spiritual discipline. Achieving spiritual discipline is the highest goal of the alchemist.

The ideal is to take the energy of some instinct, such as for sex or violence, and to sublimate it into a higher order, such as an art. This is what is meant by the transmutation of lead into gold. An alchemist can take their base impulses (represented by lead), which are indifferent to the suffering of others, and transmute them into energies (represented by gold) that work to reduce those others’ suffering .

As above, so below: all the things stated above as truths of personal alchemy are also true on a global level. There is a work of alchemy taking place right now on Earth that amounts to the imposition of order upon chaos on a planetary scale.

The fundamental act of civilisation is, like the fundamental act of alchemy, the imposition of order upon chaos.

The history of civilisation is the history of the imposition of the higher order of will upon the chaos of raw animal instinct. To be civilised is to have developed the ability to resist impulses to attack, rape and steal. A civilised man can laugh off insults, because he knows that to give in to his instinct to punish would be weakness. His highest value is not dominance but composure.

Our society invests a tremendous amount of time in trying to teach young people to think twice before giving in to temporary impulses that might have permanent consequences. Children are told morality stories from when they are old enough to listen and they continue getting lectured well into adulthood. The idea is to induce them to behave in ways that do not cause suffering to others.

Civilisation, then, is the same thing as alchemy, only it is the name given to alchemy at the collective level.

A statesman transmutes lead into gold by passing a law that proscribes certain behaviours. A great author does the same thing by writing a novel that gives its readers insight into the human condition. A great sportsman transmutes tribal bloodlust into a performance of improvisational theatre. All of these people further civilisation by minimising actions that cause suffering.

An ideal civilisation will operate on the frequency of gold. At this level, the ruling class is guided by God, and all of their actions are in tune with the will of God. If the ruling class is correctly devoted to God, then those devoted to the ruling class will be devoted to God, and so on, so that even the simplest peasant acts in accordance with the divine will.

A civilisation that has lost touch with God might operate on the level of silver, as ours appears to. We are godless but are yet to disintegrate into the level of all-out warfare – although this may happen if we fail at the great work of alchemy that is civilisation. A civilisation at war has fallen to the level of iron, and one that falls so far that its very survival is in question has regressed to the level of clay.

The alchemical future of our civilisation will depend on whether we can reconnect to God, or whether we fall further into violence and savagery. It seems that many of our most primal instincts for acquisition and competition are making a comeback, and this has led to a lower frequency of consciousness all over the world. If it keeps decreasing, then war is all but inevitable.

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The First Shall Be Last And The Last Shall Be First

The phrase “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” is mentioned in many different spiritual or religious contexts, perhaps most famously in the Bible. It refers to a Nietzschean revaluation of all values, where the existing social order is completely inverted. This essay takes a detailed look at the various ways that such an inversion can happen.

There are four realms of elemental alchemical energy: the realm of clay, the realm of iron, the realm of silver and the realm of gold.

When one transitions from one realm to another, it inevitably means that the previous social order is upset, often to the point of being completely reversed. Sometimes it means that the very actions that led to success (or failure) in the one realm lead to the exact opposite result in the new realm.

For instance, large men with big muscles dominate in the realm of iron, because they are better at fighting. But if their group should transition into the realm of clay, the base survival level, being big is a disadvantage. In a state of resource scarcity, the largest individuals have the greatest stress trying to obtain enough resources to meet their metabolic needs. The best fighters tend to be the worst scavengers.

When Jesus used this phrase, he was referring to the transition from the realm of silver to the realm of gold. The time that Jesus lived in was one when the advances of civilisation had led to a grossly materialistic culture. He was warning those who benefitted from that materialism that their positions at the top of the hierarchy weren’t as secure as they wanted to think.

There are other transitions: from iron to silver reflects the imposition of an age of peace, from silver to iron represents the collapse of a peaceful age into a one of war etc.

In all of these transitions, there is an element of the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The man of silver, whose gregarious and social nature makes him the dominant party during peacetime, usually becomes a weakling when society transitions into the realm of iron. Likewise, the man of iron, whose physical courage and unyielding nature makes him a war hero, becomes a criminal delinquent when society transitions into the realm of silver.

On Earth, it’s possible to accumulate vast wealth and power. Doing so for the sake of rising in social status is something that is common to all social animals, and in the realm of silver it will increase your position on the hierarchy. Upon the death of the physical body, however, the connection to all of that wealth is lost, and one’s soul stands before God once again.

Should it be God’s judgment that your wealth was accumulated at the cost of other people’s suffering, then your likely fate is to be reincarnated into a world where people behave like you did. Your next life, then, will be fraught with the suffering caused by greed. You will, of course, not complain, because before God you will understand that it’s perfectly fair for you to reincarnate in a world full of beings on the same frequency as yourself.

By this means, a man who could have been the very highest of all in one material world might become the very lowest of all in the next one.

This is not at all to imply that it’s immoral to be wealthy. It’s entirely possible that a person’s great wealth is the result of being showered in gratitude by the multitudes who that person has helped. There’s no reason to automatically assume that any given fortune was acquired by crime. It’s simply a fact that advantage in one realm does not correlate with advantage in the next one.

On the other side of the divide, there are many people today who possess vast spiritual knowledge but who sit at the bottom of the social hierarchy on account of that such knowledge is not valued. We may live in a degenerate age, perhaps even a Kali Yuga. This means that the sort of person who once concerned themselves with spiritual knowledge is now inevitably an outcast.

The knowledge that is valued today is that which causes one to grow in material power or wealth. Spiritual knowledge, and the desire for spiritual knowledge, are more or less considered mental illness. Those who currently rule the West are so utterly Godless that they have pathologised the very belief in God. We have fallen very far from the realm of gold.

Once upon a time the spiritual man would have been a shaman or a sage, and warrior-kings would come to speak to them about things that no-one else understood, and their advice would thereby lighten the suffering of many myriads. Great witches, likewise, would have been consulted on decisions that set the course of kingdoms and empires.

Today we look at the shaman or witch and, instead of seeing a person whose mind is set on the spiritual at the expense of the material (and therefore holy), we see one whose mind is set on delusions at the expense of the real (and therefore diseased). We see a psychotic to be treated with disdain rather than a visionary to be treated with regard.

However, the time may come when a revolutionary spirit is stoked and when the shackles of materialism are thrown off. It’s already apparent to many that the obsessive focus on GDP growth at the expense of all else is causing more misery that it’s alleviating. A transition to another realm could involve the introduction of a new Golden Age onto the Earth.

The world is rapidly approaching a revolutionary transition between realms in any case. The elite governments of our world are hopelessly corrupt, and awareness of this is spreading faster than ever (a process that some are describing as The Great Awakening). The pre-existing fractures in our society will not be able to survive the stresses that are coming.

Perhaps the first shall become last in the sense that the elites of one corrupt system are cast down when it is overthrown, and the last shall become first in the sense that the good people who were kept down by corruption will rise to their natural place in the hierarchy. The best thing is to work on raising one’s own frequency so that one can take the right measures when the time comes.

Slave Morality and Modern Conceptions of Human Nature

The main reason why there is so much political disagreement in the world is because there are many different conceptions of human nature. As this column has discussed previously, a person’s politics follow directly from their conception of human nature. This essay will look specifically at how slave morality conceives of human nature, and the effect this has on public discourse.

To understand how slave morality conceives of human nature, it’s first necessary to understand the difference between the Hobbesian and the Rousseauean conceptions of it.

Hobbes’s conception, as discussed in Leviathan, is that human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The state of nature, for humans, is the same as the state of nature for other animals – a zero-sum game characterised by violence and cruelty. Because life is naturally miserable, enlightened elites are justified in defying nature in various ways, such as building a giant state apparatus to watch over people.

Rousseau’s conception is best described as that of the “noble savage”. The essential idea here is that humanity was better before it was corrupted by civilisation. In a state of nature, Rousseau contends, humans are gregarious, wealthy, kind etc. – the opposite of Hobbes’s conception. Rousseau’s idea belongs to a school of thought broadly described as Romanticism.

The idea that humans are intrinsically good is far from a new one. Confucian philosopher Mencius made the argument, some 2,400 years ago, that humans were inherently good because all humans would instinctively act if they saw a baby crawling towards a well. Confucius himself, however, argued that men had to be bound by laws imposed upon them from above by their betters.

The reality is better understood today, thanks to advances in biological science and ethology. Observational fieldwork of other primate species has shown us that Hobbes and Rousseau were both right and wrong. Humans are more than capable of being either good or evil, both at an individual and at a collective level, and are really more opportunistic than they are moral.

Slave morality blends these two conceptions together and combines them in a single idea girded by unalloyed resentment. Slave morality expresses itself as a belief that the weaker party is automatically the morally superior party. Therefore, whenever there is a conflict, picking a side is as simple as determining who is the weaker party.

What this has led to is a conception of human nature that claims strong people are nasty and Hobbesian, and weak people kind and Rousseauean.

Anyone with high social status is assumed to have achieved it by viciousness, aggression, skulduggery and violence. Nastiness is, to the slave mindset, the only way that one can distinguish oneself from the masses – there is no such thing as excellence. Even the desire to distinguish oneself is evil.

Anyone with low social status, by contrast, is assumed to have received it because they were too kind and loving. Either they got exploited by a nasty Hobbesian, or they gave so much of their wealth away that they were left with nothing themselves. Kindness is, to the slave mindset, the highest moral value, because it avoids confrontation.

Another way that slave morality expresses itself is a refusal to concede that any one person or group of people are superior to any other, in any way. This mentality will deny that the great variety of different environments on this planet resulted in a commensurate variety of different adaptations. To admit this would be to concede that some were better adapted to others. Slave mentality is too resentful to admit this.

At its most dogmatic, slave morality denies any inherent difference between population groups full stop. All differences in outcome are therefore considered to be cultural in nature. This mentality was satirised by StoneToss when he pointed out the contrast between how willing people are to concede that genes explain physical differences on the one hand, with how willing people are to concede that genes explain mental or behavioural differences on the other.

This reaches its greatest absurdity when slave moralists insist that the difference in physical strength between men and women is due to environmental causes. This comically naive logic would be laughable if it was held by a child. When held by a fully serious adult it’s monstrous, and the shadows of the gulags become apparent.

Anyone who has travelled and observed the world (and many people who haven’t) will, of course, have noticed that there are many people who have laboured their entire lives without building up much strength (such as Indians), whereas others don’t need to exercise at all to become strong (such as Polynesians). The other population groups are all somewhere in between.

Moreover, anyone who has travelled will have observed that there are a vast range of different environments on Planet Earth, and therefore a vast range of different survival pressures. This range of survival pressures has necessarily led to a multiplicity of genetic variation.

The genetic basis for the differences in physical strength between populations is obvious. Therefore, it stands to reason that there will be a large variation in mental, intellectual and behavioural tendencies because of genetics.

To disagree is to deny reality, but this is the real horror of slave morality – it rejects life and even reality itself.

Unfortunately, slave morality has started to become normalised on account of the fact that populations are so large now that the vast majority of people have no chance of ever achieving a leadership position. This means that resentment-based narratives will become ever more popular, and accurate scientific information will become ever harder to find.