20 Years Since Columbine: Are We Still Nihilists?

This week saw the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. The massacre shocked a Western World used to adult serial killers, because we didn’t believe that high schoolers could also be capable of such evil. In the aftermath of the massacre, the consensus was that the motivation for the deed came from nihilism. This essay asks: are we still nihilists?

History can be thought of as a series of attempts to solve the basic existential question of what we’re supposed to be doing here on this planet.

For many centuries, we had religion, and the struggle between good and evil, chaos and order. But then we killed God, and (as Nietzsche predicted) this threw us back into Nature, and the world of eternal struggle. This played itself out in the titanic clash of empires that was World War One, and the following clash of nations that was World War Two. After three decades of trauma, we decided that we’d had enough bloodshed, and so we tried a new narrative.

The postwar consensus was based around pure hedonism. After three decades of deprivation, something as simple as being able to buy a milkshake or a cheeseburger on demand was seen as a great pleasure that demanded appreciation. Later, the number of television channels to which one was subscribed was the sign of material fortune. The problem was, of course, that hedonism is not an answer to spiritual problems.

The Columbine High School massacre was perhaps the first major sign that the postwar consensus had failed. The prosperity the Boomers enjoyed was based on the idea that material consumption was the reason for human existence. This was great fun, but it was only ever a distraction. It never solved the basic existential dilemma.

Klebold and Harris’s actions were an example of something that this column has previously called anarcho-nihilism. This is where one proposes to destroy the pre-existing system without offering any alternative system that might replace it. One simply destroys for the sake of destroying.

Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant were later examples of this phenomenon. Both men wrote entire manifestos that detailed at length their grievances with the world and the way it was being run. Enemy crimes were listed exhaustively, but neither man suggested much in the way of an alternative. Both will go down in history, but neither as a builder of nations.

Anarcho-nihilism could be said to be the challenge of our time. This isn’t the same as simple nihilism, which was the problem of previous times, because nihilism didn’t always lead to a violent assault on the old order. It usually led to simple suicide, which meant that the ruling class were not particularly bothered by it. Since March 14th this year, there have been more deaths to suicide in New Zealand than to terrorism, but the latter has taken up a hundred thousand times more emotional energy.

If we are to avoid going down the path of Breiviks and Tarrants destroying the whole world in a hail of bullets, we need to assert some kind of anti-nihilism that meets the emotional needs of the masses, while not repeating the mistakes of previous attempts at this.

An idea of what form this anti-nihilism might take can be seen in the various corners of cyberspace. In 1999, The Shroomery was only just getting started. Now it is one of the most popular counter-culture websites in the world, with an Alexa ranking in the top 30,000. Here it’s possible to find all kinds of discussions about aspects of spirituality that ordinary people would have trouble being able to comprehend – at least for now.

Any anti-nihilistic movement powerful enough to truly appeal to a great number of people will have to achieve a number of things. At a minimum, it must convince people that their actions in this world, and specifically whether or not those actions increase or decrease the suffering of their fellow sentient beings, are meaningful.

Achieving this may require the promulgation of the kind of sentiment that arises as a result of the psychedelic experience, the kind that is often derided as “hippie” or “new age” but which, if examined closely, answers with awesome clarity the questions of how we got here and what we’re supposed to be doing. This might require the reinstatement of something like the Eleusinian Mysteries, so that we can collectively revel in something beyond the material.

At time of writing, in 2019, it seems like not only are we nihilists, but we are destructive ones, and not only that, but the destructive and nihilistic sentiments are getting worse. That is certainly cause for alarm, but it’s also cause to take action, and to help promote an alternative. With enthusiastic promotion of psychedelic medicines for curing spiritual illness, it may be possible for us to finally overcome the threat of nihilism, and to allow a new spirituality to rise.

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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.

A Sevenfold Conception of Inherent Human Rights

In this age of tyranny and chaos, many people have lost their natural understanding of the inherent rights of human beings. Many of us have strayed so far from reality, and drifted so far into slave morality, that we honestly believe that rights are granted by the goodwill of the Government. This essay will argue that human rights are not only inherent, and necessary for any civilisation to exist, but also that they are sevenfold, at three different levels of resolution.

To understand our inherent rights, it is necessary to turn to a philosophy that accurately describes reality. We do so here with reference to elementalism, in particular the hierarchy of the four masculine elements. The four masculine elements are clay, iron, silver and gold, in ascending order of rarity and value.

Clay is the most fundamental of the masculine elements, and represents the feminine realm of Nature. In this sense, it represents the rights relating to a person’s life, their right to life and their right to self-ownership. Inherent human rights in the realm of clay means that people inherently have the right to life.

Applying the paradigm of clay to human rights tells us that the State does not have the right to kill its citizens, and neither may it claim right over a person’s body without that person’s consent. The Government may not use the people for medical experimentation, and neither may they be conscripted, whether as soldiers or labourers.

More specifically, the Government ought not to levy taxes on basic food produce, and neither should they interrupt the right of people to gather food and water from the wilderness, because both processes are essential for life. Some would go as far as to argue that the State ought to supply a universal basic income to compensate for the imposition of private property.

Iron is the next most fundamental element, and refers to the masculine realm of war and defence. Inherent human rights in the realm of iron means that people inherently have the right to physical self-defence. They have the right to own and carry weapons, both to protect their own person and their home. They also have the right to expect that the State will act to defend the physical integrity of the nation, and that it will act to protect their private property.

It is also recognised here that the people themselves are the ultimate guarantor of their rights. The realm of iron is the realm of masculine wisdom, and here it is understood that the Government is not always the friend of the people, and is all too often its enemy. Being wisdom, and not excess, there are limits here: people may only harm others if those others are posing a direct, immediate and actionable threat.

Anarcho-homicidalism is enshrined as a right under the realm of iron. The people are never obliged to be slaves – this right is absolute and fundamental. Therefore, they have the right to take any measures necessary to resist enslavement – up to, and including, killing their enslavers. The point at which it is necessary to do so is a question for the people themselves, and never a question for their government.

Silver is the first of the precious masculine elements, and refers to the realm of the mind and intellect. Inherent human rights in the realm of silver means that people inherently have the right to pursue and to discuss the truth. This is otherwise known as the “right to free inquiry” because it is in the nature of gentlemen, when their baser duties are discharged, to discuss such things.

This implies that the rights of the people to freely research, read, discuss and impart information shall not be restricted, except in cases where there is an immediate risk of physical suffering (i.e. incitement of violence). People must always have the right to gather to discuss subjects and to impart information to each other. The State has no right to interfere with a person’s life because they expressed a certain piece of information, whether fact or opinion.

These rights mean that institutions like the Office of Chief Censor are to immediately be abolished. Nothing is to be censored, however certain information might be classified as unsuitable for some audiences, in that exposure to it may cause them harm. Note that, with the realm of iron, there are limits to rights here: the right to free speech does not legalise fraud, nor outright lying for the sake of defamation.

Gold is the most precious of the masculine elements, and refers to the realm of consciousness and God. Because God is more fundamental than language, and therefore cannot be spoken of, it’s not easy to speak about what inherent rights a person has in the realm of gold. Like gold, these rights are precious, and sometimes very rare. In principle, the paradigm of gold here relates to the rights to religious and spiritual freedom.

Inherent human rights in the realm of gold means that people inherently have the right to conduct any ritual, and to consume any spiritual sacrament, that they believe will get them closer to God. These rights are subject to the three more fundamental rights, in that they cannot infringe on any other person’s free speech (i.e. no blasphemy laws), they cannot infringe on any other person’s bodily integrity (i.e. no infant genital mutilation) and they cannot infringe on any other person’s right to life (i.e. no convert or die).

This means that the State has absolutely no right to restrict the consumption and sharing of spiritual sacraments such as cannabis, psilocybin and DMT. No-one has to go through a court and argue that these substances are part of any recognised religious tradition – they simply have the inherent right to use them. Citizens inherently have the right to take any action they feel will bring them closer to God, as long as it does not cause suffering to others.

It is also recognised here that rights are granted by the Will of God, which is more fundamental than the right of any human institution, whether governmental, ecclesiastical, military or otherwise. Therefore, because these rights are granted by God, no such institution can rightly take them away. If it tries to, the people have the right to resist, and they have God’s approval to do so. These rights are inherent to the nature of reality, which is something more fundamental than human governments.

There is another layer behind these four masculine elements. It could be said that, in the same way that the four masculine elements divide into base and precious, so too do our rights divide into a base right that can easily be understood by all people, no matter their intellect, and a precious right that that is harder to grasp but which must be fought for with a determination befitting its value.

The fundamental feminine right, then, relates to the physical world. It is the right to not suffer physically at the hands of the State; the right to physical liberty. What this means in practice can be seen be examining the realms of iron and clay. We can summarise it as the right to bodily integrity, or the right to not have one’s bodily integrity harmed by the State.

The right to physical liberty means that people have the fundamental right to decide how their bodies are used, and what goes into them, and what stays in them – this is known as the Base Right because even animals intuitively understand it. The State does not have the right to impede the physical security or harm the physical integrity of its citizens, whether at the group or individual level. Neither does it have the right to impede their access to territory, unless suffering should be caused by doing so.

In practice, this means that the State does not have the right to interfere with the reproductive rights of its citizens. It cannot mandate a limit to family size, for example, and neither can it prohibit abortion. Nor can it force vaccinations on people, or any health treatment on people, without their consent – the Base Right forbids it. It also means that people, at the group level, have the right to free assembly.

The fundamental masculine right, on the other hand, relates to the metaphysical world. It is the right not to suffer metaphysically at the hands of the State. What this means in practice can be seen by examining the realms of silver and gold. It can be summarised as the right to metaphysical integrity, or the right to not have one’s metaphysical integrity harmed by the state.

In much the same way that people have the right to decide what goes into their bodies and how their bodies are used, they also have the right to decide what goes into their minds and how their minds are used. This right is called the Precious Right because, like masculinity itself, it isn’t always clearly understood.

It means that people have the right to cognitive liberty. Although much of this is already covered under the realm of silver and its rights to free speech, there is more here. The State may not infringe on the rights of the people to express themselves, and may not interfere with the psychological integrity of its citizens, whether at a group or individual level. Neither may it decide that certain practices are legitimate spiritual ones and others not.

There is a third and final level, a right even more fundamental than the Base and Precious Rights, the seventh right that ties all the others together. It is, simply put, the right not to suffer at the hands of the State. This is known as the Fundamental Right and is to be used as the guiding principle whenever it is not clear how to proceed.

The right not to suffer at the hands of the State underpins all of the Base Right, the Precious Right, the right to life, the right to self-defence, the right to free inquiry and the right to spiritual exploration. The Fundamental Right recognises that the State may not cause suffering to people in any of the physical, metaphysical, spiritual, intellectual, martial or biological realms.

Describing our rights like this, in elemental terms, is now necessary owing to the confusion that has arisen from the meshing together of hundreds of incompatible value systems. Our current governmental models have refused to recognise our rights as human beings, and so it has become necessary for us to rally around a new conception of those rights and to see that it is enforced in the space around us. This sevenfold elemental conception of human rights is the way forward.

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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.

Clown World Chronicles: What is ‘Accelerationism’?

Following the Christchurch mosque shootings, and the study of shooter Branton Tarrant’s manifesto, many people have found themselves newly aware of something called accelerationism. Understanding the political landscape of the coming years demands that we understand this political philosophy and the reasoning behind it. This essay explains.

The key to understanding accelerationism is understanding the boiling frog metaphor. This metaphor has it that a frog placed into a pot of boiling water will hop straight out. If one wishes to boil the frog alive, it’s necessary to put the frog in lukewarm water and then to raise the temperature slowly enough that the frog doesn’t sense the increase. Then, by the time it realises that it’s being boiled, it’s too late.

Some people realised, in the aftermath of World War II, that Adolf Hitler probably wouldn’t have caused anywhere near as much carnage as he did if the other nations had all ganged up on him earlier. Hitler had boiled the frog by going after a number of smaller countries in succession, first by peace and then by war, but always gradually enough so that the rest of them never felt the impetus to ally against him.

This lesson was learned again when the world became aware of the horrors of the Soviet Union. The gradual removal of personal rights, and the slow but relentless gulagisation of political opponents, showed the world that a totalitarian government can go as far as it likes, and people will not resist as long as the process happens slowly enough.

We could have learned the lesson much earlier than this. Machiavelli wrote about this exact concept when he stated that “Wars can never be avoided, only postponed to the benefit of one or the other party.” One implication of this wisdom is to not overvalue peace, because doing so can lead to a long and slow decline that gives your enemies time to gather strength, to the point where the inevitable future war is much worse than it would have been if it had started sooner. Better to smash them while the advantage is yours.

Branton Tarrant’s logic, the logic of accelerationism, could be expressed like this: the proportion of white people in white countries is falling, and will continue to fall as long as the current government structure remains in place. Eventually, the proportion of white people will be so low that they can (and will) be eliminated, Haiti-style. Because the white population is decreasing slowly, their destruction is akin to that of the frog in the slowly boiling pot.

In much the same way that the frog in the boiling pot could be saved by turning the heat up so high that it realised it was being boiled, so could the white race be saved by accelerating the destruction of their government and the destruction of the capitalist system that demands the importation of cheap labour from wherever it could be found. This could be achieved by raising political tensions to boilover point.

If there is to be an apocalyptic race war, Tarrant reasoned, better to start it today, while the numbers are still favourable, than to wait until mass immigration has reduced the position of white people to South Africa levels. If a mosque shooting helps accelerate tensions towards that race war, then great.

It sounds like the logic of a monster – and it is – but the sad irony is that Tarrant got almost everything he wanted from his deed. The New Zealand Government leaped into the trap with both feet.

First the Government banned semi-automatic firearms, driving a wedge between rural gun owners and the safety-obsessed darlings in the cities. Then leftists on social media started hurling all kinds of abuse at working-class people concerned about the effects of mass immigration on their wages, calling them ‘racists’ and ‘Nazis’. Most ghastly of all, Radio NZ went as far as broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer, enraging Christians and atheists alike.

The jackpot was the hysterical finger pointing and mutual recrimination that swept the nation, as everyone on the left called Tarrant a white supremacist and said that his actions were facilitated by the free speech policy of people on the right, while everyone on the right called Tarrant a working-class ecofascist and said that his actions were facilitated by the immigration policy of people on the left. The nation tore itself down the middle.

If Tarrant had had Internet access in his cell, he would have laughed his bollocks off.

However, just because he got what he wanted with regard to the immediate social chaos, he may not have got what he wanted with regard to wider acceptance of his ideals. After all, there’s one massive, and obvious, flaw with accelerationism: it’s hard to distinguish from just wrecking things.

Any person considering accelerationism has to ask themselves: what are we actually accelerating towards?

Because if we’re accelerating towards a collapse of the current social system, at what point do we stop trying to accelerate collapse and instead try to resist entropy and rebuild a society worth living in? Do we accelerate back to the Victorian Age? The Medieval Age? The Stone Age? In the end, it seems like accelerationism is just another form of anarcho-nihilism, a masculine energy turned self-destructive for lack of correct direction.

A truly decent masculine ideology would, rather, than destroying and increasing chaos, seek to create and to increase order. This it would do by not focusing on a narrative of collective future destruction. Instead, it ought to focus on a narrative of collective future creation, of building a world in which suffering is limited more effectively than in the worlds of our ancestors. Promulgation of such a thing, and acceptance of it by the working class, is necessary to counteract the appeal of accelerationism.

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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 Basics of VPN Use, And Why Every Kiwi Needs to Know Them

The aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shooting showed that the New Zealand Government is willing to give away all of our freedoms in its blind panic to clamp down on everything. We Kiwis are going to have to learn how to fight Internet censorship and how to share information despite a Government committed to banning free discussion. This article discusses the basics of VPN use.

‘VPN’ stands for Virtual Private Network. It serves to extend a private network across a public one, so that you virtually access a private network somewhere else in the world. Essentially, a computer somewhere else surfs the Internet on your behalf, and then sends the data directly to your computer. The point of this is primarily to circumvent government censorship and corporate geo-restrictions.

It’s like the diplomatic black bag of internet traffic – the Government can’t snoop in on it while its in transit and choose to block it.

VPNs are very popular in totalitarian countries such as China, because they allow their users to access websites that the government doesn’t wish them to access. As any reader of 1984 could tell you, the prime objective of any government is to stay in power, by whatever means necessary. One of the primary ways this can be achieved is by controlling information and discourse, so that rebellious ideas cannot flourish in the minds of the populace.

As Joseph Stalin put it: “Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”

In the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings, the New Zealand Government has taken a sharply totalitarian turn. They seem to have decided, without securing the consent of the people or even making an announcement, that it’s okay for them to censor whatever website they see fit, for any reason (or even none). Although they will not admit it, this is a totalitarian action that breaches fundamental human rights. For this reason, we citizens are forced to take counter measures.

When a country such as New Zealand tries to block the free flow of information to its citizens, those citizens have to turn to grey- or black-market solutions such as VPNs. Using a VPN will allow a person to access almost any website that the New Zealand Government may have decreed verboten, for the reason that the Great Firewall of New Zealand will consider the web traffic to be something else.

The Opera browser comes with a built-in VPN, which is probably the easiest way to get started for anyone new to the idea. The simplest way to get started is to just download and install the Opera browser (the download page can be found with a simple web search). If you then open that browser, you can see the Opera symbol up in the top left corner. Clicking on this will open a drop-down menu, on which you can select ‘Settings’ near the bottom.

This will take you to a separate Settings page, where you have a number of options. By default, you will come to the Basic panel. Towards the top-left corner of the screen, underneath the word ‘Settings’ you should be able to see the words ‘Basic’ and ‘Advanced’. ‘Advanced’ is a drop-down menu, itself consisting of three options: ‘Privacy & security’, ‘Features’ and ‘Browser’.

If you click on ‘Features’, a number of options will appear in the centre panel. At the top of these is one called ‘VPN’. Underneath this is the option to ‘Enable VPN’. From here, enabling the browser VPN is a simple matter of hitting the radio switch to the right.

Note that this may make your browsing a bit slower, because the VPN is an extra step between you and your data. However, this is a minor inconvenience, and may be your only easy option if you want to access forbidden websites.

Some people might say at this point “But the Government, in its omnibeneficence, only banned the really evil sites where hate speech flourished and I didn’t want to go there anyway.” Fair enough – but the Government could ban anything else in the future, and so you might as well learn how to circumvent that now while you still can.

Ask yourself, do you really believe that the Government is going to stop with 8chan and Zero Hedge? The Government probably regrets that the Internet ever came to exist. They would gladly switch to having a North Korea-style government news service with all alternatives banned if they thought they could get away with it.

So what we can expect is more of what David Icke calls the “Totalitarian Tiptoe”, in which the Government bans an ever-increasing number of websites, taking advantage of moral panics to do so. Because the Government’s appetite for power and control is unlimited, Kiwis ought to get to know the basics of VPN use immediately.

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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.