Cogwheel

Attribution

The Age of the Cogwheel 

 

Nothing ever seems to change, does it? Each day, the mindless, mechanical automatons of this spiritually-shattered Western world awake from their dull slumber to continue the mundane repetition of an industrial society. No reflection of substantial matters (spirituality, existence, telos or lack thereof) ever occurs among them. They seek to execute the same pattern of cognitive behaviors and rote, exoteric beliefs which were passed down to them by their immediate forefathers. Some may call this passing-down "tradition," but it is most certainly not "Tradition."

What are the sort of behaviors to which I am referring? They are practically innumerable, but a few examples should suffice for this essay:

• Blind acceptance of a belief based on the whims of a majority consensus (Brett Stevens calls this "Crowdism," whereas others may simply refer to it as "democracy" or "liberalism"
• The notion that "work ennobles," largely a byproduct of a spiritually-dead, materialistic society
• A disconnect from time and space
• *As manifested in industrial agriculture, cookie-cutter architecture, and lack of societal unity
• The "conveyer-belt" mentality: The concept that life must be lived in a sequential, meaningless order
• *Elementary school -> High School -> College -> Work -> Death
• Such a mentality is necessary for the continuance of industrial society 
• The devaluation of true creativity and knowledge for rote-memorization of isolated data and information
• Loss of psychological health

It is important that the uninitiated understand that simply accepting beliefs and perspectives passed down from a previous iteration do not constitute the philosophic and spiritual holism of "Tradition." Thus, individual traditions must be analyzed in the context of Tradition and overall health on both the individual and societal levels. Nevertheless, the analytic ability of individual persons required to examine the usefulness of a particular societal process has fallen dramatically.

The situation is very difficult for the natural aristocracy. On the one hand, true knowledge has become scarce from generation to generation. On the other, liberalism has a "locking" mechanism on the beliefs of the current generation. Though liberalism purports to "free" the individual from the tyranny of authority, it instead subjects the aforementioned individual to the whims and delights of the mob. Since the mobians generally enjoy emulating one another, ideas move at the pace dictated by the most cunning rhetoricians, for good or bad. Only inertia can result.

What is the best solution to rectifying this degraded state of affairs? How best are we to escape from the cogwheels of liberalism and industrialism? As usual, I believe the answer lies in the thoughts of Nietzsche.

The Overman Solution

 

At first glance, it may seem as though Traditional conservatism and Nietzsche's champion of the Will to Power do not reconcile. One may have a tendency to perceive the Ubermensch as an anarchic destroyer of norms. Yet, the Overman, to me, is merely an individual who has escaped from the whims of the crowd with his dignity intact. There are numerous planes of human experience, perhaps an infinite amount of them, in fact. Thus, the Overman decouples his internal spectrum of experience from that of the crowd. This decoupling necessitates freedom from the power of others - a very difficult objective to achieve in an age of globalism and interdependency.

How do I plan to implement the Overman Solution? My goal is reach a state of corporatist autarky. I want my future family to be self-sufficient and not reliant upon faceless, abstract institutions and the bloody, pulsating crowd. Money is obviously required, not merely for its value as a quantity, but instead for what it can purchase: good, fertile land, power generation equipment, books, tools, and weapons. I no longer wish to play by the rules dictated to me by authorities which may or may not have my best interests at heart. But, material self-sufficiency is only the first step.

I do not intend to be in isolation. Yet, the bonds I establish with others must come into being on my own terms rather than those of the crowd. A community of like-minded Traditionalists must be created. Virtual connections simply do not suffice. I have stated in a few previous articles my desire to see some sort of community like so established in the vein of liberal eco-villages, but with a much heavier focus on emulating ancient European societies.

Finally, we arrive at the third phase of the Overman Solution: Spiritual autarky. The Overman shall have no more need for systems of philosophy or the spiritual slaughterhouses of the crowd. He will draw his values from within via careful meditation and reflection. In the context of a community, he will synthesize these values with those of his peers in order to create a tapestry which transvaluates all values.

In the end, the Overman has succeeded in establishing his independence from the Crowd. Without the Crowd, there can be no cogwheels, no accursed clocks, no "agendas," nor coercive obligations. Through his strikings to regain power from institutions and systems, he has regained his vital independence.

Responsibility

Attribution

Society is filled with so-called "experts." Many narcissistic individuals with delusions of grandeur aspire to great academic or political heights in order to fulfill their self-created mandate from heaven Marx science the people. This phenomenon is one of the psychological cornerstones of socialism. In essence, these individuals feel powerless in a dull, lifeless world of materialist philosophy and yearn for greater control of... something, something upon which they cannot put their minds to bear. Indeed, they seek to subvert the natural, strong, and aristocratic attributes of a master-morality-based society in order to correct their own psychological deficiencies.

The family, the spiritual building block of any aristocratic civilization, stands directly in their path. The socialist realizes that the family is a source of incredible power; however, since the socialist typically does not recognize spirituality as playing an important role in society, he merely acknowledges the biological imperative as the motivation for familial bonds and power. Nevertheless, he recognizes the competition and seeks to destroy it by whatever means necessary in order to increase his own influence. Families meet with competition in other families, yet the stability of society is preserved due to an establishment of a hierarchy and social equilibrium. A society of family-less individuals, however, is much less accepting of hierarchy, Tradition, and higher meanings, so it tends to degrade into a power battle dictated by demagogues, tyrants, and other unsavory characters. Such an environment allows the socialist to thrive, and instigated economic conflict provides the necessary stimulus for control of the common citizenry.

In order to level the playing field, the socialist must invert the values which fortified the natural aristocracy. Wisdom passed down throughout the ages is lost as the structures which supported the inheritance of familial knowledge are dissolved into society. The sophisticated rituals of marriage are broken down, and the ties that bind a family together come apart. The result of this dissolution comes in two variants. Firstly, the responsibility an individual would normally have for his family's health and well-being lacks context. As a result, groups of "experts" are entrusted with these responsibilities: policemen, lawyers, doctors, accountants, and so forth. Secondly, societal macro-dynamics that allowed for the smooth functioning of humans in everyday life disintegrate, thus leading to the construction of civilization which is not congruent with human needs.

Only one method exists to fight these betrayers. We conservatives must retake responsibility for our own lives, the lives of our families, and the citizens of the community in which we live. Entrusting and offloading that responsibility to another party is a recipe for disintegration across multiple planes, including the spiritual, societal, biological, and economic. How are we to achieve such a reclamation? Here are some ideas:

• Food production: You have a couple of techniques available. Since most modern plots of suburban/urban land lack the capacity for large-scale, sustainable harvests, you ought to get to know your farmer. Bypass the supermarkets and enroll in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. You should learn the basic techniques of horticulture in order to augment your supplies and prepare for shortages in healthy food.
• Home and Communal Education: Band together with like-minded Traditionalists and educate your children in the works which define Western civilization alongside ancillary and practical skills. 
• Fitness: Work out as often as possible; build your endurance (cardiovascular health) and strength (through heavy, manual labor or weightlifting) 
• Governance: Establish local governing institutions to counterattack inept bureaucratic authorities... easier said than done unless you live in a rural area
• Defense: Buy a rifle and learn to use it. 
• Skepticism: Any time an institution with a fancy title wants to impress upon you the necessity of offloading your responsibility, critically examine it. No bureaucracy exists without its parasites, and oftentimes they are the ones at the helm of such organizations.
• Relax: Stop worrying about societal pressures and conformity rules, as in this era they are meaningless and depraved. Do what makes you strong. Don't succumb to the slave morality of modernity.

We can reclaim Western civilization, but only in small portions. We must work from the "bottom-up." Every member of such a society is an important element in a new foundation.

If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul. - Russel Kirk

Crypto-Traditionalism

Attribution

In the era of Mass Society, the naturally-gifted and inclined beings who would have constituted a natural aristocracy in the previous phases of human history have been drowned in a sea of societal entropy. Mass society and its accompanying enforcement mechanisms (mass media, socialization, standardized education) produce a sterilizing effect upon what would have been a naturally distributed civilization. Alternative ideas outside the idea-space promoted by the mass society are generally unattainable by the majority of beings who fall within the middle section of the population's intelligence normal probability distribution. The lack of an efficient and widespread peer-to-peer communication network also hinders the propagation of hostile ideas in the mass society's universe. Fortunately, Traditionalists today have a very powerful network available: the Internet.

A head-on attack on modernity is doomed to fail. The proponents of mass society have been indoctrinated from birth, and one requires a very high natural character and intellect in order to overcome these congenital biases. Thus, when Julius Evola declares that the differentiated man must "ride the tiger," we intuitively realize that modernity is a force with a mind of its own that should not be directly opposed. Instead, the differentiated men require more defensive strategies. The Internet provides the framework for such strategies. In fact, this blog and others like it comprise a cornerstone of the defensive strategy.

The tidal wave of mass society rushes ever onward, though it appears from my perspective to be decelerating. Nevertheless, when one wants to protect a community from a gargantuan wave, the more logical approach is to cordon a slice of physical geometry with tall fortifications instead of attempting to stop the entire ocean. Thus, we Traditionalists can utilize the Internet to create and defend such a community in the digital sphere. As the Tiger begins to collapse under the weight of its own exertions and as we gain more power and resolve, we may gradually move from a community that is virtual to concrete. Meanwhile, an underground network of commerce, information exchange, ritual creation, and strategy shall spring into existence and be cultivated by a dedicated wardens. These blogs and their mailing-list precursors are the vanguard.

Like a tree, this virtual community must grow in a toxic wasteland of junk ideas, adapt, evolve, and then snuff out the blackguards and other weeds with a multitude of leafy branches. An entire culture, a syncretic constructed from the dusty tomes of the past, the despair of today, and the hope for the future, can generate a plethora of tribes branching off from the main trunk of this philosophy. In due time, an entire distributed network of Traditionalism can be born from the ashes of modernity. Remember, we are not conceiving a dogma but rather a set of principles which are temporally contextual, so this concept should not be perceived as utopian.

A question subsequently arises. How should such a community/tribe/cooperative expand? Crypto-anarchism provides interesting material for such an enterprise. Since the Internet exists in the context of nation-states and their prying institutions (NSA, FBI, CIA, Google), the aforementioned digital fortifications must be strong. However, where Crypto-anarchism primarily has the activities of secure information exchange and commerce as its primary concerns, Crypto-traditionalism requires the mechanisms of synchronization and propagation for the synthesizing and generation of new tribes. Besides, libertarianism (anarcho-capitalism, in this instance) is a useless abstraction. The very act of creating a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist society would culminate in a tribal society - humans rarely play the part of the lone wolf.

This cryptographically-secured network would thus allow the cultivation and flourishing of a natural aristocracy which can both self-select and identify promising candidates from the pool of mass society. A fortified, interconnected network of knowledge, ideas, customs, and reputations thus make way for a rebirth of Traditional civilization as the Tiger dies its slow death. "Bah, this is all wishful thinking!" says the skeptic.

Yet, the skeptic has by reading this article begun the process.

Special thanks to an ethereal confidant for the germination of this work.

Liberalism: The Practice of Double Standards

There are few present-era, mass-reported (so-called) issues which boil my blood more than the forced cutting of male infants, a practice known as circumcision. Naturally, I despise the errant doctors who perform misinform parents and perform the amputation. Were the law as pertaining to this matter at all effective, those practitioners indicted for propagating this disgusting, barbaric atrocity would immediately be given life-sentences in prison, if not a death sentences. Of course, the liberal-do-gooders and feminists have succeeded at making illegal the female version of this procedure, a practice why they decry as female sexual repression. Occasionally, they will give a nod to male mutilation, and then continue happily on their path to destroying civilization.

Why would the liberals and feminists, the philosophic groups most concerned with "equality," ignore the inhumane treatment of male infants? I posit that they are not concerned with whatever vague definition of equality tickles their fancy on any given day. Rather, they seek to balance the scales of justice in favor of themselves at the expense of society. In other words, this microcosmic issue shows the inherent propensity of liberals to revert to a sort of cognitive dissonance. They subconsciously recognize that the powers they pursue within society are for their own benefit; yet, they simultaneously stand on a soapbox of equality!

Each day, a few thousand baby boys are subjected to an amputation which destroys their ability to enjoy a healthy, functioning sexual organ. Feminists, LGBT activists, and other liberal loony-squads have mostly ignored it. If an atrocity as huge as male genital mutilation can go unknown in a society full of liberals and humanists, what other crimes against men are being perpetrated beneath the surface of the liberal hive-mind?

The key to defeating liberalism is the recognition that its constituents do not stand for the equality of all human beings, a meaningless and worthless goal. Instead, they utilize the language of the masses to pathologically invoke emotions which prove beneficial to the various "causes" liberals seek to shove down the throats of the unsophisticated masses. Once their semiotic weapon is recognized, it becomes easier for true conservatives to deflect and subsequently counter. Unfortunately, modern conservatives are only partially effective at disarming liberals. Since modern American conservatives philosophically stand on the shoulders of classical liberals, they too suffer from cognitive dissonance. We need a new political platform upon which to stand.

This hypothetical platform should utilize two strategies:

1. Re-program the semiotic devices of liberals and propagate them
2. Quietly convince key power-holders in society to champion the cause of Traditionalism

There exist numerous microcosms in society which expose the double standard of liberalism. We must recognize them, categorize them, and use them in our efforts to accomplish these two objectives.

The Purpose of Material Wealth

Palace Neuschwanstein (Attribution)

I have thrown the question around a few times on this blog and other Internet locales, but I am afraid that it tickles my interest so much that I must repeat it: "Is there a purpose for economics in a spiritually-oriented Traditional society? If so, what is that purpose?" Of course, we need economic production for the creation of the valuable foodstuffs, clothing, and shelter necessary for basic biological survival. Beyond that, to what ends should we utilize surplus wealth?

Three Common Traditionalist Economic Arrangements

In the Traditionalist thought-sphere, that question opens a firestorm of colossal proportions. Some Traditionalists argue for a return to horticultural societies, or even hunter-gatherer arrangements. I can understand this argument, since human biological health prior to the introduction of agriculture was generally optimal due to sufficient exercise and a varied diet of nuts, berries, meats, fruits, and vegetables. Furthermore, material distractions were generally at a minimum. On the other hand, varied outlets of artistic, spiritual, and intellectual expression were nonexistent.

The next rung on the ladder is Distributism, the Catholic social framework which emphasizes guilds, apprenticeships, and a wide distribution of property and the means of production. In my opinion, Distributism is merely the academic formalization of decentralized, unorganized (from the perspective of modern political science), and informal economic arrangements which existed from approximately the dawn of the so-called Commercial Revolution to the Industrial age. Some orthodox political economists contend that guilds were generally bad for economic development. However, such judgements rely upon a set of assumptions of what constitutes a "healthy" economy.

Finally, there is economic nationalism and corporatism, much like the systems propounded by European fascists in the 30's and 40's. The Italians in particular utilized a state-centralized approach whereby members of a profession or trade were grouped under a sort of macro-guild (corporation). The primary difference between Distributism and Corporatism is the degree of centralization. Whereas Distributism emphasizes a "bottom-up" approach to the distribution of wealth and the resulting economic organization, Corporatism places the overarching needs of the State over the organic arrangements of the lower tiers of society ("top-down"). Granted, I do not doubt that informal economic arrangements likely existed in the same capacity in Italy prior to the rise of Mussolini.

How Should a Traditionalist Measure the Strength of an Economic Arrangement?

For the average economist, economic growth is the most important factor when considering the strength of an economy. Without growth, the well-oiled machine of Western finance cannot function. If finance cannot function, credit takes a vacation, bank runs ensue, and, if the average economist is to be believed, anarchy will result and we shall start eating our children and euthanizing the elderly.

Yet, material prosperity forms only one cornerstone of holistic well-being. Traditionalism has recognized this for some time. After our basic needs of subsistence are met, economic consumption and production no longer becomes a factor in existential happiness. I have previously written of the alternative "heterdox" approaches to measuring economic strength. These sorts of methods tend to stem from Eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhism.

To wit, factoring psychological well-being, spiritual contentedness, and overall happiness into the equation of economic strength represents an important first step in reasserting Traditional economics. This introduction of anthropological values into the old, machine-like industrial economy implicitly recognizes that the economy is not an end unto itself, a heresy which Julius Evola condemns as pertains to the United States (and, today, the majority of the West).

An Economic Telos

 

Thus, we arrive at the ultimate question: Why should we produce and consume? I posit that there is a useful end toward which an economy can be driven. Clearly, we should not seek spiritual solace in economic matters, since the American experiment has proven that route leads to catastrophic nihilism. Instead, the economy should be subordinated and tasked with a specific purpose.

To apply a sort of hierarchy of needs at a macro level, humans must create and consume enough material to uphold their biological imperatives of survival. That much is certain. After those needs are met, spirituality can be brought to bear on surplus wealth, thereby leading to the creation of temples, grand architecture, and more robust craftsmanship.

Individuals should practice their craft, trade, or administrative duty insofar as it brings them spiritual truth as well as sustenance. To go any further might ignite the sort of unchecked greed and material lust which sparked the Industrial Age - and God knows we cannot handle another one of those. Those who do attain a position of material wealth should recognize their social responsibilities. Such responsibilities do not, of course, encompass the distribution of welfare, but rather the funding of endeavors which kindle culture.

Ultimately, material wealth must be recognized for its basic attribute: temporal impermanence. The material is nothing if not attached to spiritual ends. Such a leap of faith requires the throwing-off of subconscious assumptions inherent in the Western worldview, and we Traditionalists are the ones to assist in the overthrow of the Decadent Philosophy.