conflict – Page 58

Selectionism: The Prejudice That The World May Not Be Ready For

People are always chimping out over all society’s prejudices: sexism, racism, homophobia etc. are all variously blamed for the world being an unpleasant place to live in. While all of these prejudices have certainly contributed to the miseries of the past and present, there’s one prejudice that few are aware of, and even fewer have spoken of. This prejudice is selectionism.

Sexually reproducing species fall along a continuum that has two poles referring to the two extreme reproductive strategies described by Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson. These are known as the K strategy and the r strategy. The existence of this dichotomy has given rise to the existence of a prejudice that the world is yet to formally understand.

Among K-selected groups, the population is determined by the carrying capacity of the environment. Breeding rates are relatively low, which allows for high rates of parental investment. Consequently, the young take longer to mature. They also have longer lifespans on average and are larger. Examples are large mammals, especially humans and primates, as well as birds.

Among r-selected groups, the population is determined by the biotic potential of the individuals involved. In other words, the reproductive potential. Breeding rates are relatively high, and parental investment is low. The idea is to breed them and get them into adulthood as soon as possible. Examples are amphibians, insects and small mammals such as rodents.

It has long been noted that certain human groups are more K-selected than others. It’s apparent just by travelling around the world that some people have larger families than others, that some people mature more quickly than others and so that some people reach adulthood with greater levels of parental investment than others.

Those who get to adulthood with greater levels of parental investment tend to be healthier, both mentally and physically, and they also tend to be better educated, and thus wealthier. So K-strategists tend to produce higher standards of living than r-strategists, whether one observes at the family or the national level.

Almost without exception, the person noting such things considers themselves to be more K-selected than average. After all, in order to be educated well enough in order to understand ethology, a person generally needs to be the recipient of a large amount of parental investment, and if a person receives that then it’s likely that they are descended from K-strategists.

Selectionism, then, is a prejudice against those groups who use, or are perceived to use, an r-selected reproductive strategy. It’s essentially a bias in favour of K-strategists. A selectionist, therefore, would have a very strong in-group preference towards others they perceived to be K-selected. They would consider other K-selected groups to be superior.

Of course, there is a very real sense in which the K-selected are morally superior: their greater level of parental investment tends to lead to a healthier and better educated offspring, which tends to lead to a wealthy and prosperous society. Almost everyone agrees that a father that stays around to raise his children is morally superior to one who abandons them, and this near-universal agreement is why selectionism has so much power.

The interesting thing about it is that it cuts across and through the ordinary conceptions of races and classes. A selectionist couldn’t care less about interracial marriages between different K-selected groups. Neither could they care about marriages between different classes, as long as the family stays together and the children are raised into functioning adults.

So selectionism is entirely different to racism. Whereas the racist German and the racist Korean don’t want their children marrying each other for fear of diluting their particular racial gene pool, the selectionist sees no inherent problem. As long as their children don’t marry r-selected people, who are liable to abandon or neglect the grandchildren, the selectionist is happy.

Selectionism already exists as a prejudice, although not many people are aware of K and r selection – it’s just hidden by way of being conflated with other things.

For example, when a person chooses to look down on another race, class, family or other group of people, it’s commonly the case that they perceive that other group to be more r-selected than their own. They consider that other group to breed faster and more recklessly, and to invest less time in raising their offspring, thereby lowering the average human capital of society. In other words, they consider that other group to be more like a pest animal.

This is the basis of all group prejudice. What this essay suggests is that the group prejudice against r-strategists may come to replace all current prejudices against other races, classes or traditions. Instead of seeing blacks as pests, or the working class as pests, or Muslims as pests, this essay suggests that, in the future, people’s prejudices will fall along selectionist lines instead.

Concepts such as racism will eventually stop making sense on account of widespread race mixing. There are two separate forms of racism: excessive in-group preference and excessive out-group aversion. There is no difference between the two in a selectionist context, because K and r-selection make up a binary and mutually exclusive spectrum. Consequently, stronger in-group preference must also be weaker out-group preference in the context of selectionism.

The frightening thing about selectionism is that people who follow it might have a point: if the r-selected breed at greater rates within the same environment as the K-selected, and begin breeding earlier on account of earlier maturity, then they will inevitably overwhelm the K-selected unless they are prevented or somehow discouraged from doing so.

Selectionism, therefore, reflects a fundamental political dilemma. If the K-selected are taxed to support the greater breeding rates of the r-selected, then society itself will become more r-selected, and so all the good things brought about by heavy parental investment in offspring will disappear. Many of the people who appear to be racist, classist or otherwise prejudiced are aware of this equation.

It can be seen, then, that the idea of selectionism already has a powerful appeal, and it’s an appeal that may grow in pace with the numbers of the r-selected. Selectionism may be the prejudice that the world is not yet ready for.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 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 2017 is also available.

The Four Alchemical Realms of Law

When people talk about whether or not something is illegal, they’re talking about whether or not something is against the law. The problem with this logic is that there are several different kinds of laws, and some of them override others. As this article will examine, there is a realm of law corresponding to each of the four masculine elements of clay, iron, silver and gold.

The realm of clay corresponds to natural laws. These laws are fundamental, and therefore they underpin all the laws of iron, silver and gold. Like the clay, these laws are so fundamental that they don’t need to be written down, and they don’t need to be understood. They are simply Nature doing its thing, and they have applied long before any human laws existed, and still apply to the vast, vast majority of the Earth’s creatures.

In a state of Nature, most people are barely aware that these laws exist, until they feel the pleasure or pain that comes with acceding to, or violating, those laws. But the laws of Nature exist no matter whether a person is aware of them or not. Fall off a cliff, you die. Eat poison, you die. Get too close to the big animal with the sharp teeth, you die.

Although the basic laws of Nature are physical laws, and then chemical laws, some of them are also biological laws. Laws of clay that start to approach the realm of the laws of iron are those like “Don’t try to have sex with female X or male A will thump you over the head.” These are essentially the same laws that non-human creatures use to defend their territory or resources. “Might is right” is an example of the laws of clay.

The realm of iron corresponds to the the laws that are enforced by organised human violence. When civilisation began, all offences against the sensibilities of property owners were written down into a code of laws, and penalties for transgressing them proscribed. An entire class of judges and jailers came into being to enforce these laws, paid for by the surplus wealth generated by the order that came with civilisation.

These are laws of iron because the Police will beat you up or put you in a cage if you disobey them. You may even get your head chopped off with an iron axe. Unlike natural laws, legal laws are written down, and therefore can be enunciated very clearly (although some will always quibble). The point of this was to distinguish them from the laws of clay, which were never any more than simple animal instincts.

Like iron, the laws of iron are unyielding. The Justice System doesn’t care if you knew it was illegal or not, or if you really meant to do it or not. Justice is blind, which is another way of saying that it is merciless. Laws degrade into laws of clay once money starts getting involved in the justice system and better lawyers get lighter sentences. But when they don’t degrade, the edges of them become gilt with silver.

The realm of silver corresponds to the laws that are enforced by society. These are the laws that relate to social status, i.e. whether or not a person is considered high value by their community. Violating laws of silver doesn’t carry a risk of arrest like violating laws of iron does, but they can lead to people being less friendly towards you, and giving you fewer employment, social or romantic opportunities. Obeying laws of silver tends to lead to the opposite.

As silver is softer and brighter than iron, so are the laws that fall under the realm of silver more malleable than those that fall under the realm of iron. A person who has transgressed a law of silver, and who has earned some enmity from his fellows, can escape punishment by making a sufficient compensatory effort. Therefore, the laws of silver are more subtle than the laws of iron, and can also change on a whim.

However, like iron, they are cold and sharp enough, in their own way. Many a man has been found innocent at trial but nevertheless destroyed by whispering and gossiping. Social exclusion might be more subtle than an axe, and the consequences less permanent, but it is still enough to cause suffering, and therefore enough to modify social behaviour.

The realm of gold corresponds to the laws that are enforced by God. In this sense, the laws pertaining to the realm of gold are similar to those pertaining to clay, in that they are not written down, and neither are they social. Although other people might be able to help a person understand the laws of clay and gold, they can’t force that person to abide by them, unlike the laws of iron and silver. They can only instruct and leave it up to that person’s true will.

It isn’t easy to speak about what the laws of gold are, but it can be said that they are even more subtle than those of silver and iron. Here we are speaking of laws like the law of karma and the law of attraction. It has to be understood at this point that the realm of gold is the realm of consciousness, and its laws relate to how to alter the frequency of one’s consciousness.

Much of alchemy is the art of playing higher laws off against lower ones, so that one causes change in accordance with one’s will despite being bound by laws the entire time. This is a subject of its own and deserves its own essay, but there are some things that can be said about it here.

One can alter one’s consciousness by obeying laws in higher realms at the expense of laws in lower realms. The most powerful example of such a thing was the example of Socrates. By obeying the laws of gold, and completely ignoring all of the laws of silver, iron and clay to the point of causing his own death, Socrates made himself immortal in this world. Likewise, gathering with friends to break unjust laws of iron (such as drug laws) can create magically powerful bonds of solidarity.

This is another possible interpretation of Aleister Crowley’s saying that “The key to joy is disobedience”. By disobeying the cruder laws, such as the law of biological entropy, unjust statutory laws and by prising the truth above social fashion, it’s possible to raise the level of one’s consciousness. A skilled alchemist can therefore reduce the level of their suffering, and the level of the suffering around them, even as they disobey laws, and even though disobeying those lower laws consistently brings suffering.

A Former Black Magician Provides a Magical Analysis of the Christchurch Mosque Shootings

Mass killings almost always have the effect of spreading terror throughout the population that was slaughtered. Most of the time, this terror is the intent of the act. When it is, the killings could be said to be black magic rituals, acts of Greater Magic intended to force the will of the perpetrator onto all the people who observed it. The Christchurch mosque shootings of March 15 can be considered such a deed.

According to one perspective, there are three elementary kinds of magic. The kind that I am interested in here is black magic. This uses the power of fear to cause change in others according to the will of the magician. The other kinds are white magic, which takes fear away, and grey magic, which causes confusion.

The easy way to understand black magic is to understand it as intimidation. It’s why the Police wear uniforms, and caps with black and white chequered bands, and why security guards wear black t-shirts and shoes with thick soles. It’s why the Undertaker wears black, why the Waffen-SS wore black, and why it was said by Gareth Edwards of the All Blacks jersey that “There is something about the blackness of their jersey that strikes fear into your heart.”

Black magic could also be understood as the art of domination. A successful black magician is dominant because of the fear that other people have for them. The best way to intimidate and dominate a person, of course, is to cause them direct physical and personal injury, or credibly threaten to. If they are not able to retaliate to this then they will be forced to submit.

The Christchurch mosque shootings were black magic rituals intended to strike fear into the hearts of certain populations in New Zealand. In this sense, they were much like the John F Kennedy assassination and 9/11. The hope was that the killings would incite submission. This is the most effective way to understand them, and to explain both the actions of the shooter and the response of the nation. Furthermore, it allows us to predict the future.

Jacinda Ardern, and the New Zealand mainstream media, being atheists and non-believers in magic, made a number of grave errors in the aftermath of those shootings. They made these errors because they did not account for being in the domain of magic. Some decisions, although they may have made sense from the perspective of being nice and soothing tensions, didn’t make much sense from the perspective of countering black magic.

When Ardern decided that the name of Branton Tarrant shall not be spoken in polite company, she raised his black magic power to the level of Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. Oddly, there’s a scene from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in which Harry is told: “Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

This is advice that Ardern should really have heeded. When she spoke to Parliament and made a particular effort not to mention Tarrant’s name, she demonstrated that the nation had collectively shit itself in response to the shootings. We showed that they had affected us very deeply and that we were greatly shaken. Tarrant was living rent-free in our heads.

The problem with this, from a black magic perspective, is that is shows vulnerability, and vulnerability attracts more cruelty. I’ll repeat that again: vulnerability attracts cruelty. A lot of people don’t like to accept this, on account of that it is so cruel, but it’s nevertheless how things work. Black magicians like to seek out vulnerability because it means that their magic will have a greater impact.

So any budding black magicians out there, thinking of a way to make their actions as powerful as possible, may have observed Ardern’s response, and taken note of the vulnerability displayed. This is a very bad sign, because it predicts a high likelihood of future attacks, whether follow-up moves by white nationalists or reprisals by Islamists.

After all, Tarrant himself was the victim of a previous act of black magic: the Drottninggatan truck attack in Stockholm in 2015 that left three dead, including an eight-year old girl named Ebba Åkerlund. Images of Åkerlund’s body torn into several pieces left a powerful impression on many Internet dwellers, in particular those on the chans. Tarrant was affected so heavily that he mentioned it in his manifesto.

The downside of black magic, of course, is that if the intended victims of it do not submit then their fear will turn naturally to hatred. When it does, it’s possible for cycles of revenge attacks to arise, and even to become normalised. The horror of the Drottninggatan truck attack was insufficient to cause Tarrant to submit, and as such it turned to the hatred that we saw expressed on March 15.

The way to counter black magic is with fearlessness. London’s response to the 7/7 bus attacks of 2005, which killed 56 people, is the model to follow. Instead of the response that Vince McLeod dubbed “The Great New Zealand Chimpout“, the British response made a point of being business as usual, thereby denying the perpetrators the emotional impact that they desired.

It was noted by all that various criminal gangs, in particular the Mongrel Mob, took a front and centre role in the community response to the shootings. The most visible response involved leading a public haka. The haka needs to be understood, in this context, as a black magic ritual. Its purpose is to demonstrate to the enemy your vigour, determination and unity of purpose. In this, a haka is little different to any other war dance.

The point of performing a haka after such a mass shooting was to demonstrate to the unseen “bad guys” out there that we are strong, we are ready and we are willing to fight. We will not be cowed. This is often the context in which a haka was performed in pre-contact New Zealand: someone would spot a member of an enemy war party in the bush, alert the others, and a haka would be performed to show that enemy that they were going to die if they continued to intrude. This was understood as black magic and called mākutu.

Certainly the New Zealand nation is currently in a state of extreme fear. Acts of national unity are necessary, but they have to be carefully considered owing to the extreme circumstances. In that regard, Tarrant’s actions have to be considered one of the, if not the single most, powerful acts of black magic ever performed in New Zealand. The only real comparison in recent history would be the Rainbow Warrior bombing, which only killed one person.

If the New Zealand nation wants to go forward without attracting further black magicians, and further ritual sacrifices (no matter who conducts them), they need to demonstrate that they are not afraid of death. This is chiefly done by enjoying life, and continuing to enjoy life as we had done before the shootings. Full attendance of Super Rugby games is one example. This will demonstrate to all the black magicians out there that we are not weak and not to waste their efforts on us.

Viktor Hellman is a regular contributor to VJM Publishing and author of the upcoming Anarcho-Homicidalist Manifesto.

Red Pill, White Pill, Blue Pill, Black Pill

There are many theories that describe the change in personality traits over generations. The most well-known is the Strauss-Howe conception of generations that gave us terms like “Baby Boomer”. Local anarchist philosopher Rick Giles has expanded on this conception, giving us a spiral idea of history based around the ebb and flow of moral cycles. This essay attempts to map both these theories onto the “pill theory” of modern Internet culture.

The Red Pill-Blue Pill dichotomy is a metaphor seen everywhere on the Internet of today. It is based on the famous scene from The Matrix, the film that made a powerful impression on Generation X and, consequently, Internet culture. In this scene, the character Morpheus offers the protagonist Neo a choice of one of two pills: a blue one that will send him back to the dream world of being a normal person, and a red one that will awaken him to the truth of reality and show him “how deep this rabbithole goes”.

It’s a metaphor that hearkens back to Plato’s Cave and the mystery schools before that. The idea is that anyone who has taken the red pill is someone who has voluntarily accepted the truth of reality, no matter how terrible, and who has escaped delusion. They are therefore enlightened, so much so that their lives are now fundamentally different to the bluepilled. Thus, ‘bluepilled’ is effectively a synonym for ‘unenlightened’, ‘gullible’ or ‘a sucker/pleb’.

A related conception is the dichotomy of the White and Black Pills. These serve as rough spiritual metaphors. The idea is that anyone who has taken the white pill is optimistic, full of life, happy and positive. The blackpilled, by contrast, are pessimistic, morbid, depressed and emo. One way of characterising this axis is using the Bloomer and Doomer images, the former blossoming like a spring flower, the latter seeing death and decay around every corner.

As this essay will now demonstrate, it’s possible to map the Blue Pill-Red Pill-White Pill-Black Pill quadrichotomy from popular Internet culture onto both Strauss-Howe’s and Giles’s conceptions of human generational change.

The generation that fought in World War II are the red pilled. They got redpilled harder than anyone since could really understand. It’s impossible to have any illusions when you are facing an artillery barrage or a Panzer charge – you appraise reality accurately and act accordingly or you die, simple as that.

As the war was winding up, they naturally got together, first in their companies and then in their Returned Services Associations, and asked themselves what the fuck the whole war was really about, and who was ultimately to blame. Eventually, they came to understand that the whole idea of a heroic narrative was a complete sham, designed to manufacture consent for a war that really only benefitted arms manufacturers, bankers and politicians. To understand that the world works like this is to be redpilled.

Commensurate with being red pilled is a somewhat traumatised disposition. As a highly social, highly traumatised generation, they hit the booze, and hard. Theirs is an Honour Culture in Giles’s conception, because they risked everything for what they have, and only very rarely complain or show pain or weakness.

The Silent Generation are the white pilled. They grew up during the Great Depression, and so became accustomed to having very little. This has meant that they instinctively feel gratitude for the plenty that we currently do have. They also grew up hearing about how the previous generation saved the world from terrible evil, so they grew up believing that they lived in a society where their forebears only wanted the best for them and where authorities could be trusted.

They are white pilled because they are naturally the most optimistic. This generation grew up with the suspicion that God may well have favoured the Anglo-American style of governance over its German, Soviet and Japanese alternatives. For them, everything works out in the end, and success is simply a matter of continuing long enough.

Their characteristic drug is tobacco, which is appropriate because they are a social generation, and also for the reason that you have to be whitepilled to smoke tobacco because you have to ignore the likelihood that it will kill you. Theirs is more of a Dignity Culture because they haven’t had the need to fight quite as hard as the World War II Generation. They’re not inclined to butt heads over honour; they would rather let things slide.

The Baby Boomer generation is bluepilled. They are Cypher from the Matrix. They don’t care at all about thinking or struggling to overcome, they just want an easy ride and someone to wipe their arse when they get old. For them, staying informed is a simple matter of switching the television on and being told what the truth is. They have a vague sense that reality is truly terrible, so it’s best to not look too deeply into things.

Their problem is that they are essentially doubly gullible. Not only are they not aware of how reality works, having been raised by televisions in an age of wealth, but their parents weren’t redpilled either, having lived in an age of plenty. The Boomers don’t really get it at all, which is why their characteristic drug is opiates. Preferably administered rectally by cheap immigrant labour.

The bluepilled don’t want to think, they just want their entitlements. This is why they correspond to a Victimhood Culture in Giles’s conception. Every obligation they are made to feel is considered an unreasonable imposition, and they deeply resent the implication that they’ve fucked up the world. Their greatest fear is someone cutting their pensions.

The offspring of the Boomers, Generation X, are the black pilled. This is the natural result of having bluepilled parents. Because their parents wanted nothing but the easiest ride possible, they didn’t end up passing on as much knowledge as they could have. Indeed, Generation X were pretty much left to it, many becoming “latchkey kids” who had both parents working. They felt that their parents not giving a shit, and that led to them not giving one either.

Among Generation X, the highest moral value is not giving a shit. This manifests in an exaggerated sense of coolness. To give a shit about anything is to be uncool, which is to be shunned. This is why grunge was so popular among this generation’s teenage years, and why they have been so apathetic towards politics and religion. Apathy means that you can be trusted; ambition means that you might abandon them like their parents did.

Generation X is a natural slave cohort, which is the result of their apathy towards politics. Because they have shunned those who tried to understand the political world and to organise, they are almost completely bereft of both guidance and power. Their characteristic drug is cannabis, because once you realise that there truly is no hope and that no-one gives a shit, you might as well just spark one up and enjoy your day.

It’s not clear how the Millennials will end up defining themselves, because at the moment they seem to be an extended form of Generation X, replete with nihilism and apathy. At some point, one would expect there to be a revolution so that some kind of Honour Culture reasserted itself, but whether this will come at the hands of the Millennials or of a generation that comes later remains to be seen.

What can be predicted is that the nihilistic apathy of the younger generations today will lead to a cataclysm of some kind. It might be military in nature, it might be climate-related, or it might be simple revenge on the Boomers. Whatever happens, the generation that follows the bloodshed will be redpilled, and the cycle will begin anew.