Slavery starts in the mind

If there is one thing modernity could use, it’s more good readers.

People are taught to read at a young age.  One of my earliest memories is being proud at being to read a whole book.  Looking back on it, I think I was proud because it was something that I was told to do.  I took every chance I could to show it off to as many adults in my life as possible.  They showered me with praise for accomplishing something that most children aren’t able to do until they are much older.

Being only 3 or 4, it goes without saying that it was one of those books you find only in pre-school classes and in households with young children; it was a book with many pictures, text that rhymed, and large print.

It’s odd, when you are that young, memories are devoid of concrete facts. They only exist as distinct impressions.  I’m fairly certain that I did not actually read the book.  Sure, I had said all of the right words at the right time, but the symbols on the pages meant nothing.

I thought I had fooled all of the adults. It had been read to me so many times that I had only memorized what to say when the pictures were shown.  Looking back on it, I probably was fooling no one.  The adults could probably see beyond my trick.

As we grow older, we are given more books to read with more words, less pictures, and smaller text.  However, not much else changes. Many people ever learn how to read properly.   They are only looking at the “pictures” and telling others what they expect to hear.

When you read something, you are essentially on a journey through another person’s thought path.  Much like most things in life, the easiest thing to do is to just follow along.  If someone asks your opinion on it, you can always just regurgitate what the author said and change a few words  It is much harder to take those thoughts and turn them into your own.

If something you read does not sit well with you, ask yourself why.  If you feel you are right, let yourself be heard. Disagreement is the sign of a free thinker. If you find yourself agreeing with everything someone says, it is no different than following his every command. The difference between master and slave starts in the mind.

Bad writers set out to preach.  They seek to enslave the reader’s mind.  Behind every “thou shalt” lies an cowardly author.  He thinks lowly of you, so think lowly of him.

Good writing frees the reader’s mind.  It encourages reflection.  Only through reflection can an idea become your own. The wise doubt all things before they believe them.  Without reflection, reading is nothing besides cold, dead thoughts.

Dead end lesbians

I live on the first story of an apartment building.  Above me lives a lesbian couple. I know next to nothing about them.  They’ve never bothered to introduce themselves.  The few times I’ve knocked on their door, to give them a package they missed or something similarly menial, I’ve been treated in a rather cold and impersonal manner.

I see their last names and initials on the box beside mine when I check the mail. I occasionally pass them by chance in the hallways.  Usually, they are heading out together with their small and unruly dog.  From time to time, if I am playing bass heavy music, I’ll get a yell through the ceiling to turn it down.  The walls in my apartment building are paper thin, but I’ve yet to see them come downstairs to address me directly.

Strangely, I’ve never really felt strongly enough about them, in anyway. To feel anything but indifference about them seems foreign.  If I had to pin an emotion on it, I’d call it pity rather than hate.  They are clearly an unhappy people.

I try to think about the path lead them to where they are now.  The choices and circumstance that has brought them to that apartment above me.  From the looks of it, they’ve been there for many years before I moved in last Spring.  I try to see where they might be going, what drives them to act they way they do, and only draw blanks.

I see an incomplete life.  I would not be the least bit surprised if I were to come back after 15 years (hopefully long after I’ve moved on), and find nothing of value. I see them still living in the same cramped apartment with another dog of similar stature and equally questionable manners.  They’ve gotten older and fatter.  The best change that has happened in their life is that they have a flatter, bigger TV.

Perhaps, this is the future for most modern young people.  I can’t help but see it as a dead end.  The lesbians are living the modern dream.  They live in a big city.  I’m sure they have unique jobs they can brag about to their friends.  They are prolonging any semblance of a normal life for years to come.  They are hip as they come by modern standards.

Their lifestyle has been put forth by modern society as something for young women to strive for.   Their grandmothers had completely different hopes and aspirations for their lives.  It’s had a profound affect on society as a whole.  In the last 50 years, modernity has completely changed half of the population views success.

Convincing young women that their ancestors did not think women were important is one of the greatest lies of the modern age.  The disasters that this mindset has wrought are unparalleled.  It could not be farther from the truth.  Any of ancient society that did not make full use of half of its citizens would have been easily outpaced by its rivals.  Even the most war-like and masculine centered societies such as Sparta had a sacred place for their women.

Aristotle explains:

The old mythologer would seem to have been right in uniting Ares and Aphrodite, for all warlike races are prone to the love either of men or of women. This was exemplified among the Spartans in the days of their greatness; many things were managed by their women. But what difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.
– The Politics, Book II

Modern ideas on gender were never intended to free women.  It’s effect has been the opposite. It has removed them from where they are needed the most.  These changes have been disastrous for both men and women.  In the best ancient societies, women played an equally essential role to men.  If we ever wish to escape the desolation of modernity, good women will be an essential part of it as well.

The tragic pagan

To learn the essence of something, it is a useful exercise to seek out its origins. Without knowing where something came from, it is impossible to truly understand the meaning of it.  By studying the conditions that caused it to come into being, you can see it in its purest form.

To see the true beginnings of Europe art and paganism, you must travel back to an ancient time before written records.  While much can be learned by this, it is much harder to draw concrete conclusions without any easily accessible first hand evidence.

Drama is modern by these standards. Its oldest form is tragedy. It was developed by the Ancient Greeks, just under 2500 years ago.  While the majority of the plays the Greeks wrote have been lost to the ravages of time, a few key masterpieces have been saved.  They are still reproducible in their original form, with the same words and meaning.  To have the unaltered expression of the ancients is a priceless gift for modern people interested in such things.

While its importance to history and art is obvious, it is has a much less well known side.  Tragedy was just as important to religion in the ancient world.  By immersing yourself in these works, you instantly get a feeling of their pagan nature.  The word itself has connotations of ritual. Tragedy is derived from the Ancient Greek word tragoidia, meaning he-goat-song. 

Tragedy was derived from an ancient pagan ritual to Dionysus called dithyramb. At the center of this ritual was a hymn sung about the life of Dionysus.  Upwards of fifty men were said to have taken part in these rituals. It started to take on a new form when spoken word was intermingled with this singing.  As the worship of the gods evolved, these rituals started to focus more on these spoken roles.  It created something very similar to the drama we are familiar with today.

While the chorus might have lost its central role, the subject matter of these plays were ever focused on the gods.  The main characters of this new form of ritual were mostly human, but their fates were inevitably decided by the gods.  The tragic hero was smart, capable, and extraordinarily gifted and his fate was unusually cruel.

This characteristic, unfortunate turn is what gives tragedy its power.  The downfall of the main character is most often brought on by his own hubris and arrogance to the gods. Through this, tragedy becomes an inherently moralistic art form.  It strives to teach the audience member reverence for the gods through these tales of great misfortune.

In contrast, Christianity and similar Asiatic religions tell fables that promote hope through resurrection and redemption to the lowliest of men. A pagan playwright has no use for such endings. Its values are inherently European. Tragedy demonstrates how no one can escape consequences.  The gods will always have the final say, despite the greatest efforts of man.

Strong and healthy European societies have always embraced this tragic outlook in their mythology and art.  Later European paganism tragic tales such as The Death of Baldr and The Fall of Sigurd. We see similar themes appear in the plays of the Renaissance with writers such as the great Shakespeare and in Romantic Europe through operatic composers such as Wagner.

When tragedy is viewed this way, you can start to see modern drama, in cinema and at the theater, through the eyes of the ancient.  Those who understand the power of the tragic hero share much in common with the pagan authors who first forged the genre.  Tragedy is an affirmation of the pagan warrior spirit; the world can be cruel and unforgiving but ultimately it is the way you fight that gives life its true meaning.

The importance of purpose

Hat man sein warum des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem wie.

If one has a why in life, he can bear almost any how.

– Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

For most animals, the majority of their waking hours are spent on tasks that help them sustain their life.  If the animal is a predator, he will spend most of his time hunting for its next meal.  If the animal is trapped in a storm, he will spend a great deal of time trying to stay dry and warm.  If the animal is thirsty, he will try to find a cold and clear pool to drink from.

For most of our history, man was such an animal.  His purpose was immediate and apparent.  He had to survive.  Most everything else in his life was incidental and secondary.  If ancient man made any sort of error in these basic essentials, he was doomed to death.

In contrast, modern man, assuming he was born in a half way competent county, has no such worries.  Even the most incompetent members of modern society are given plenty of food to eat, a roof over their head, and safety from danger is as good as guaranteed from birth.

Not having to constantly be on the look out for panther attacks or worrying about your where your next meal is coming from has left modern man with a lot of spare time on his hands.  It has left man open to pursue the grandeur of high art, study the mysteries of science, and construct and tame his environment through engineering.  It has also allowed him to grow fat from excess, indulge every sexual whim without consequence, and own more shiny bits of plastic than he could possibly have use for.  Unfortunately, humanity chooses the latter pursuits more often than not.

What distinguishes noble pursuits from base ones is purely a result of their outcome.   These one type of behavior can lead to waste and destruction while the other leads to a better quality of life and creation.  When looking at it from a distance, the choice is clear what kind of behavior man should encourage.  Why is it the case then that so many people do not act with creative intent?

The answer lies in the kind of motivation that precedes each of these activities.  Think of the choice between eating junk food or something healthy.  Given the choose between a slice of pizza or an apple for a snack, the vast majority of humanity would choice the junk food.  Yet, almost everyone knows the apple is better for you.

The reason that people will choose the pizza almost every time is because it offers instant gratification.  It tastes great.  You will instantly feel pleasure while you consume it.  The apple offers essential vitamins and complex sugars needed for nutrition.  It’s effects can only be seen after a long time.

Consider now that you are on a diet.  You need to lose weight and you know eating bad food will prevent you from doing so.  If your will to lose weight was stronger than the desire for instant gratification, you’ll have the apple for the snack.  Your long term goal would allow you to weigh each option with that in mind and allow you to make the correct choice.

Societies live by these same principles.  Right now, modernity does not offer anyone a purpose. Our ability to survive has outpaced our societies ability to come up with reasons to live. As modern technology continues to make life easier and easier, we will continue to see more destructive behavior emerge from the general populace for the sake of pleasure. We will continue to degenerate until the very things that make life easy now are not so easily attained.  Perhaps then, nature will then have the final say after all.

The case for nations

If you asked an average person what a nation is, you’d most likely get a definition that is synonymous with a country. A part of the world that is ruled over by a particular government.  In most modern usages of the word, they’d be right.  People use nation interchangeably with state or country all the time.  However, the real meaning of what a nation means is much more profound.

A nation is more than geography and politics.  It is a people.  A people that can be defined through shared origins, customs, history, language, and culture.  We often associate nations with their country because the land itself is an integral part to each of these things.

Nations are an ancient concept. They’ve been with us since the very first tribes banded together. Nations have been seen as an essential part of human identity ever since.  Nations work so well because they allow entire populations to form around a common set of ideas and goals.  This allows for a level of cooperation and understanding that would otherwise be impossible.

With the recent rise of globalism, a new paradigm has been put forth as an alternative to nations.   Globalism is the refutation that there is anything inherently different between human cultures.  It is based around the concept that with modern technical advancements, nations are an obsolete way of thinking about peoples.

If you can travel around the world in hours and speak to anybody across any distance instantly over the phone, why bother trying to find commonality with people around you?  If you can make my product cheaper in a sweatshop half way around the world and just ship it here, why bother having a factory here?  If your country is a third world hellhole, why bother trying to make it better when you can move to a rich country by simply getting on a plane?

This sort of thinking has made the elites of the world very rich in the last half century.  It has also brought millions of foreigners and alien cultures into lands where they would not otherwise belong.  It is extremely clear who benefits from the transition from nations to this new globalist paradigm. It is a bit more murky who loses out.

The transition away from nations has affected almost everyone but in a more intangible and less distinct way.  We are losing essentially everything we’ve inherited from our ancestors.  As Hollywood films expand to more  countries, we lose more languages.  As McDonald’s expands their restaurant count, we lose more local cuisine. As the NAFTA and EU expand, more countries lose their national sovereignty.

As globalism continues to rise, we’ll all lose.  For a few more dollars, we’ll lose the very things that make life worth living.  We’ll lose our identities.

Dogs and the ancient in man

The winter has been particularly harsh this season.  Grime encrusted snow lines the streets.  I’m sure part of snow pack is still from the first that snow fell over four months ago in November.  It has rarely gotten above freezing since then.  Piss soaked patches of yellowish-brown ice sporadically dot the snow pack from the beginning to the end of the block.

I live in a large city.  The only time I  interact with dogs is on the sidewalk when I am going somewhere.  Usually, the dog is relieving itself and the owner is impatiently waiting for it to finish.  You can’t help but feel sad for both involved in this interaction.

What drives these urban apartment dwellers to possess an animal that consumes much of their free time and spare money?  Is it some desire to connect with wildlife?  Some desire to make any connection whatsoever?  For whatever reason, it is painful obvious that the animal isn’t getting a good deal.

A dog in their natural state is able to roam free.  It is able to explore the wilderness.  Leaving a dog in an apartment for twenty hours a day is pure cruelty.  When you limit a dog to only a few walks a day around city blocks, you are depriving it of its nature.  It is no wonder these animals are pathetic to look upon.

To understand a dog’s natural environment, one must understand where they come from.  Dogs are wolves domesticated by humans in the paleolithic era.  A symbiotic bond was formed between humans and wolves.  They might be the first animals that humans domesticated.  Shortly after their domestication, dogs became ubiquitous across all human cultures in the world.

They were popular domesticated animals because they served a purpose.  They helped the paleolithic man in the hunt. Because of this role, they share a unique role in relation to man.  They are the closest connection man has to the animal kind.

When I see a modern city dweller pine to have a dog, I see a yearning to return to a time when they had a connection to the past.  I see a yearning to return to the hunt.  Like most modern attempts to reconcile their past and heritage with their current situation, it only turns out as a cruel mockery.  We see dogs bred into pathetic and misshapen forms.  We see humans forced to heed to every beck and call from their animals.

Anything deprived of their usefulness is something without a purpose.  Unfortunately, most dogs today can be characterized by their uselessness.  Only in their proper environment, can both man and dog survive as they were intended to.  Anything outside of that is foolish and ultimately pathetic.

What binds you to your country?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I continue to live in the United States.  The effort and cost of moving to another country would surely be substantial, but it is relatively minor compared to the decision of where you want to spend the rest of your life.  Many of the American bourgeois (as well as most Europeans) list “traveling” as one of their favorite hobbies yet very few ever leave their own country for more than a few weeks every year.

The main source of immigration in the modern era is decidedly from poorer third-world countries to White first-world countries.  It is primarily for economic reasons.  Whether the Muslims in Europe or Latinos in America, most immigrants express outright hatred of their host country’s culture.  They often continue to practice their culture as though they had never left their home country and sometimes, they outright subvert the culture that they are invading.

Unfortunately, culture of America has very little influence over me wanting to remain in the United States.  In fact, there is none.  America was once an outpost of Europe.  What was once a dynamic mix of British and Teutonic culture has been eroded over the past century to complete cultural nihilism.

Despite all of this, I still feel a deep kinship with the land itself.  While the industrial revolution destroyed much of the land in the populated areas of Europe and elsewhere, much of America has been untouched due to the sheer amount of area it covers.  In many aspects, it is still very much a virgin land.  I feel privileged to have grow up in an area where you could leave your backyard and walk for miles in forests untouched by modern development.  I still take every opportunity I can afford to experience these lands.

Escaping modernity

Every now and then, all of us have dreamt about escaping from society.  It’s a common fantasy entrenched deep within popular culture.  It is an undeniably romantic concept to break free of modernity and start living like our ancestors.  We’ve all seen films and books that exploit it.  It often comes in forms of being lost in a desert island, exploring the frontiers of the past, or even post-apocalyptic science fiction.

However, rarely anyone ever acts on this impulse we collectively have.  It would require a lot of courage and determination, both which most of humanity sorely lack.  It requires you to rely on your own strength and deal with your own limitations.  In return, you’d gain a level of freedom a fraction that rarely anyone that has ever lived has seen.

This is the essence of living in a society.  You give up your freedom for security.  For many, especially the weak, it is an easy trade. The first farmers in the post-neolithic world gave up their mobility for an easier source of food.  Peasants gave a portion of their crops to their lords in exchange for protection in Feudal Europe. Today, we bind ourselves to multinational corporations to gain money.

As modernity marches on, the freedoms it demands as tribute will continue to grow larger.  Nature never gives without expecting something equal in return. It is easier to be alive today than at any point in human history, and never before have so many people less free.

The farce of modern universities

A strong thirst for higher knowledge is a distinctly European trait.  The desire to learn and discover has been with us since the first priests of the neolithic era strived to learn mysteries from the gods.  It was with us during the first ruminations of philosophy in Greece and the first academies in Athens.  This tradition was carried on by our forebears all the way up to the foundation of the first universities in medieval Europe.

Nowhere is the destruction of European culture more apparent than in the modern university system.

Shortly after the last great war for Europe, a great change happened to education systems throughout every modern western society.  Universities started to admit hordes of students who would have been vastly unqualified a few generations before.

Suddenly, success came in the form of a a university diploma.  It promised a better employment and a higher social status.  Naturally, every parent was soon pushing their child to pursue a degree.

The demand for all of these new students immediately changed what higher education looked like. Universities that had been around for hundreds of years started to admit more students.  New universities started to pop up in each city in every country in the world.  Pointless new studies with no real application to the world were manufactured to accommodate the demand created by the masses of new students.

For a while, it seemed like this was working.  Productivity shot through the roof.  Now everyone could earn more money, have two cars, and live in a huge home. However, like any scam based on egalitarianism, it is falling apart.

Today, many young people struggle to find jobs despite following the promise of university education.  We’ve reached the point were we are handing a degree to just about anybody.  Is it any surprise that having a university degree isn’t as valuable as it once was?

As this becomes more and more apparent to the public at large, less and less people will send their children to universities.  All that will be left in the wake is a broken mess of once great schools.  Perhaps then, and no sooner, they will be rebuilt to their former glory.  Until then, let them wallow in self inflicted rot.