VJM Publishing

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”.

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.

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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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New Zealand Alcohol Culture

The Sixth Labour Government Kicks The Kiwi Working Class In The Guts – Again

Any last hope that the Sixth Labour Government was still operating on behalf of the New Zealand working class was dashed earlier this week by the announcement of new working visa rules. “Up to 30,000 businesses across the country will benefit” from Labour’s latest kick to the guts of the marginal workforce. This essay explains.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway claims that the new work visa rules will “assist between 25,000-30,000 businesses to fill shortages.” Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media is spinning this as a victory for New Zealand businesses, which it undoubtedly is. What they don’t mention, however, is how it’s a commensurate loss for the New Zealand working class.

As this page has previously pointed out, the wage of working-class people is a function of the supply of cheap labour. Increase the supply of cheap labour, as the “Labour” Party have done here, and you weaken the bargaining position of the working class. The more cheap labour there is, the greater the choice for the employers – and they will choose the cheapest labour they can, this being one of their greatest expenses.

The way the economy is supposed to work is that labour shortages force businesses to increase the wages they pay, which leads to marginal workers becoming attracted to those offers. The way the economy works in Clown World is that labour shortages cause employers to go crying to the Minister of Immigration, who fast-tracks visas for cheap labour to move here and undercut the native working class.

The sad truth is that the Labour Party is just as neoliberal and just as beholden to corporate interests as the National Party is – and neoliberals love mass immigration. The only difference is that the Sixth Labour Government is willing to throw the working class a bone in the form of a Winter Heating Allowance, a referendum about cannabis law reform or a bit of money to our mental health system (or what passes for it).

When it comes to actually running the country, however, they’re still very much in bed with the large New Zealand employers, and they still run the country more or less on instruction from those employers. The sad irony is that there was once a time when the Labour Party did stand for the New Zealand worker, and would have heavily criticised a move like this had it been National who brought it in.

Today’s Labour Party is unrepentantly the heir of Rogernomics. Protecting the negotiating position of the New Zealand worker is of no interest to them. Neoliberalism is still very much the way forwards, and the ever-rising suicide rate just something to be shrugged off, despite that adverse economic conditions contribute greatly to it.

The New Zealand media plays an essential role in manufacturing consent among the public for moves like these. Being entirely owned by foreign finance companies and banking interests, the media is beholden to people who profit handsomely from mass immigration driving up housing prices, increasing demands for mortgages and lowering wages.

This is why the media constantly runs stories with titles like “Growers say fruit will rot unless govt speeds up migrant worker decision,” “Labour shortage as Auckland construction ‘goes off’,” and “Why horticulture industry is facing a labour shortage.” These stories are effectively propaganda pieces, run on behalf of corporate interests, to massage the New Zealand population into accepting the mass importation of cheap labour.

Notably, no trade unionist was asked for their opinion on the Government’s move.

One of the stories linked above quotes ACT Party leader David Seymour as saying there simply aren’t “enough New Zealand workers willing to pick [the fruit].” This is a complete lie, because it leaves out half of the equation. Seymour’s sentence makes no mention of the wages being offered. The full sentence should read “enough New Zealand workers willing to pick at the wages being offered.”

Seymour, the consummate neoliberal, loves nothing more than importing cheap labour for the benefit of capital interests and at the expense of the native working class. As Dan McGlashan showed in Understanding New Zealand, no other party has a higher proportion of foreign-born voters than ACT, with a correlation of -0.74 between being born in New Zealand and voting for ACT in 2014.

Short-term opportunism can be expected of Seymour, who knows no loyalty other than to the dollar. It’s a real shame when this mentality guides the actions of the supposed social democrats. If the Labour Party won’t take measures to strengthen the negotiating position of the New Zealand working class, then who will?

The alliance of politicians, corporations and media make it all but impossible for the New Zealand worker to get a fair deal today. Given that the cost of housing is rising much faster than wages, which are already nowhere near high enough to buy houses on, a fair deal seems like it’s getting even further away. An entirely new socioeconomic arrangement is becoming necessary, perhaps one based around a universal basic income.

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