revolution – Page 25

Ethnomasochism

In abnormal psychology, masochism is known as a paraphilia that is characterised by “the derivation of sexual gratification from being subjected to physical pain or humiliation by oneself or another person” (Merriam-Webster). The depictions of masochism in films such as Secretary and books such as Fifty Shades of Gray are, while dramatised, essentially accurate.

Some masochistic individuals have displaced this ordinarily individualistic sentiment with a collective one. It’s common for Jewish men to engage in Nazi roleplay with hired dominatrices, for example. Central to this is the idea that an individual can derive pleasure from being called a “filthy Jew” or similar by a dominatrix, as long as they are able to identify with the race that is being derided.

Ethnomasochism is essentially masochism taken to the collective level of the race. Instead of begging to be whipped by a woman on account of personal transgressions, the ethnomasochist invites abuse on account of the collective transgressions of those sharing a skin colour with them.

It’s becoming common to encounter ethnomasochists on the Internet, especially on social media. They can be found wringing their hands about the past crimes of people of European descent, stereotyping all European colonists as rapists, thieves and murderers.

They will describe a world history in which all races lived in harmony until Europeans started spewing out of Europe like demons out of the mouth of Hell, bringing misery and suffering to all they encountered, for no other motivation than the pure malice their stony hearts held for all life. Usually this comes with a demand that white people collectively make up for the crimes of their race by means of some kind of reparations.

In other words, white people are bad boys that need to be punished.

One can almost guarantee that the sort of person who is an ethnomasochist is also privileged, middle-class and holds deep Marxist sympathies. Chances are high they have a micropenis or are impotent when unable to live out some race-based humiliation fantasy, such as getting cucked by a “black bull”, and chances are also high that they hold much contempt for white working-class people, who they are happy to stereotype as ignorant, violent and lazy (sound familiar?).

To this end, we can define ethnomasochism as “the derivation of sexual gratification from being subjected to physical pain or humiliation by oneself or another person on account of belonging to a particular, despised race.”

Ironically, this movement is actually more racist than normal people are. White people who have a fetish about seeing their girlfriends railed by black men are very, very similar to men who have a fetish about seeing their girlfriends railed by dogs. Part of the thrill comes from the degradation implied by having sex with a creature that’s less than human.

Moreover, a person can only feel shame on account of belonging to a particular race to the degree that they identify with being a member of that race (i.e. to the degree that their identity excludes other races). So it’s only possible to feel ethnomasochistic sentiments about the past crimes of the white race if one identifies strongly with one’s skin colour to the exclusion of other personal qualities – which is the definition of racist.

Curiously, it’s impossible to cure ethnomasochism by subjecting a person with it to hearing a non-white person talk about how they think there’s nothing wrong with white people, or how they were glad for European colonisation because it saved them from the vagaries of Nature, or from cannibalism or ceaseless tribal warfare, or because it gave them an opportunity to engage with the modern world and the wealth of accumulated wisdom going back to before Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Lao Tzu and Confucius..

Because the ethnomasochist is racist, they will often assume that non-white people do not have the intelligence to reason their way to original conclusions, and thus their opinions are irrational and therefore can be rejected in favour of the anti-white narrative.

The cure for ethnomasochism is reading a history book, because an appreciation of history will tell you that the whole world is terrible and always has been, whether or not white people showed up. All non-white races have treated each other with horrific disregard at various points because that is human nature when exposed to the environmental challenges presented by planet Earth.

The Four Kinds of Dark Age

The four types of Dark Age are the Age of Poverty, the Age of Violence, the Age of Ignorance, and the Age of Cowardice. There can be more than one of these ages occurring at any one time, and there can be none, but the invariable is that people suffer in a Dark Age for reasons outside of themselves. These four ages also correspond closely to the four masculine elements of clay, iron, silver and gold.

Humanity seems to have been cast into a world in which all four Dark Ages were in operation simultaneously and when we were little more than animals. One by one, we rose out of these Dark Ages and into a Golden Age, but most would argue that we have since degenerated again.

The Dark Age corresponding to the element of clay is the Age of Poverty. This is when people are unhappy because the basic necessities are hard to come by. A famine would be the typical example of an Age of Poverty, as would a depression. The natural state of humanity in the biological past – i.e. as some kind of ape-thing – could be described as an Age of Poverty.

In an Age of Poverty, children suffer from hunger and basic disease, clothing and housing is shabby and falling apart and getting through every day is a question of making the right sacrifices. There is no surplus, and everything keeps getting harder.

Corresponding to the element of iron is the Age of Violence. The obvious example of this is a war, where people are actively trying to kill each other for whatever reason. In an Age of Violence, people are unhappy because their basic physical security is under threat and this leads to immense anxiety and suffering.

The Ages of Poverty and Violence are related in that the elements that represent them are the two base elements. This suggests that these ages are dark for immediate physical reasons.

The element of silver corresponds to the Age of Ignorance. As silver is brilliant, shines and is reflective, so are those qualities lost in an Age of Ignorance.

Brilliant people become rare; the sort of mind necessary to make original scientific advancements or to produce great works of art, architecture or engineering become impossible to find. No-one shines creatively, instead being possessed of a zombie-like dullness that finds expression in anti-intellectualism and a kind of moronic pride in not reading or being educated.

In a real Age of Ignorance, all aspects of silver are mistaken for signs of either foppishness, passivity and faggotry (from the perspective of iron) or a cruel, detached, insectoid lack of emotional warmth (from the perspective of clay). The real benefits to the quality of life that intelligence brings are either not appreciated or actively despised.

Gold corresponds to an Age of Cowardice. The essence of this age is when men and women lose the Will to confront and to face up to the truth.

That silver and gold are valuable tell us that getting out of an Age of Violence is the most we can expect as a decency. Ages of Ignorance and Ages of Cowardice are ever-present threats owing to the valuable nature of the metaphysical elements that keeps them away.

Generally speaking, human culture devolves from the highest stage down to the lowest, a phenomenon that Plato observed in The Republic. One begins in an aristocracy, which might correspond to an absence of a Dark Age, with the various steps down the ladder of correct rule reflecting a Dark Age corresponding to rule without the next element down. Then comes an Age of Cowardice, when the philosopher kings no longer have the courage to assert their right to rule.

This Age of Cowardice leads to the high-spirited and assertive person taking over, which Plato referred to as a timocracy. This degenerates into an Age of Ignorance, when the rulers ignore the philosophers for so long that the importance of learning and knowledge is forgotten.

Inevitably this leads to poor political decisions being made, which leads to an Age of Violence as the frustration of the people reaches a boiling point. This can either clear out the incorrect rulers and replace them with a new aristocracy of philosopher-kings, or destroy all semblance of civilisation and return humanity to a truly primitive state – the Age of Poverty.

Generation X’s Most Bitter Realisation

Instead of seeing the next generations as inheritors of a world that they were duty-bound to steward, The Baby Boomers see the young as resources to be exploited

Some things have been part of life for so long that we’ve taken them for granted. We take for granted that parents pass wealth onto their children in the form of knowledge and silver; we take for granted that technological and social improvements mean that the quality of life increases for every generation that passes; we take for granted that each generation has an obligation to the leave the world in order for the one that comes after it. Generation X has come to bitterly realise that some of these assumptions are no longer true.

The most bitter realisation of Generation X is that we will be the first generation in history to inherit a lower standard of living than the previous generation enjoyed. The Baby Boomers ticked up so much debt on the intergenerational credit card that they can never pay it back themselves, even if they intended to. We will pay it back through the sweat of our own labour so that our parents can enjoy a lengthy retirement, the vast majority of them still fit to work.

What is currently taking place is the greatest theft in history: the Baby Boomer’s theft of the production of the Generation Xs and Millennials, who will lose a large proportion of their wages to pay back the debts their parents accumulated, and for rents on houses that they can never own, merely so that those parents could experience an unprecedented level of comfort.

They did this by giving themselves tax cuts without cutting spending, so that our nations had to borrow to pay for basic social services, many of which the Baby Boomers themselves used more frequently on account of being elderly. All over the world this was done, not just New Zealand; everywhere an excuse was found for the increase in borrowing.

At the same time, the wages of the next generation were squeezed between having to pay back massive student loans that the Baby Boomers were not themselves subjected to, competing with foreign labour to a degree that the Baby Boomers were not themselves subjected to, and forking out for ever-scarcer affordable housing to a degree that the Baby Boomers were not themselves subjected to.

So not only did the Baby Boomers ensure that they enjoyed the highest standard of living ever recorded by one generation in human history, they did so explicitly at the expense of the generations who would follow, saddling them with a debt so heavy that even war reparations would be less burdensome.

They ticked up this unique standard of living for themselves on the national credit card, and simply left us to pay the debt off, which will take half a century. For most Western nations, cleaning up this mess will involve trying to integrate millions of individuals from very strange and often barbaric cultures, people that the Baby Boomers let into our countries because they didn’t want to pay us proper wages like they themselves had been paid.

The question that will define the soul of Generation X is whether we do the same thing to the generations after us out of bitterness and resentment for what our parents put us through, or if we treat the generation after us fairly out of a belief that we learned something from the greed of our parents.

VJMP Reads: The Interregnum: Rethinking New Zealand V

This reading carries on from here.

The fifth essay in The Interregnum is ‘Welfare and Precarious Work’ by Chloe King.

Unlike the other offerings so far, this essay actually resonates with people who are working class. Instead of waffling on about climate change and other shibboleths of the global elite classes, King focuses on real issues that affect real Kiwis: poor wages, poor security of work and a pitiful excuse for a social safety net.

This essay uses anecdotal examples of young Kiwis trying to make it in a workplace that is forcing them into ever worse conditions. The nature of work in New Zealand is becoming ever more stressful as things like the 90-day firing law undermine employment security, and the essay does a good job of showing how this leads to increased rates of mental illness.

It also correctly draws attention to the cruelty of the Fifth National Government. Paula Bennett’s welfare reforms now force people seeking a benefit to fill out a 48-page form of questions – obviously a considerable challenge to the kind of person whose literacy levels place them in precarious economic positions.

King also speaks to a very real sense of outrage when she writes about how mentally ill people are often bullied back into the workforce well before they are ready – a short-sighted approach whose shortcomings become obvious when the inevitable next mental breakdown occurs.

Describing something she calls “constricted choice”, King details a very real problem in the modern workforce: our choice of jobs has increased, but the average quality of those jobs has plummeted, meaning that Kiwis are essentially forced into taking poorly paid work out of duress. The fact that we have a wide choice of crap jobs doesn’t actually make it any better.

Ultimately, King hits the bulls-eye when she states simply that “Workers deserve to be paid fairly and treated with dignity and respect.” She is right when she points out that the nature of workplace relations in New Zealand have deteriorated to the point where the emphasis is on coercing workers into obedience rather than encouraging them.

The “politics of selfishness” is a very real thing, especially in New Zealand, and King rightly points out that she’s not asking for much when she posits that “no-one should work and be poor at the same time.” It’s not much to ask for, but we’re still not getting it, and the essay concludes with a call to collective action.

In summary, Chloe King’s piece strikes much harder and more accurately at the heart of the issue than the previous efforts in this book: poor living and working conditions right here, right now, not vague threats of what might happen in 50 years’ time. It is easy to get the impression that the left is going to do much better by proposing a universal basic income than it is by going on about climate change, and so for their sake they’d do better promoting voices like King’s.