Cold Glory be our Star

Or, that previous post, in plain English

Murder of the West

The world of our fathers and forefathers is bleeding out. It was killed, not on account of weakness, but because of its great strength.

Walk through the old cities of Europe and marvel at the greatness that was built up by men with iron implements and wooden steeds. Watch film of 19th and turn-of-the-century New York, Paris, Salisbury, and weep at all we’ve lost.

The crises of the 20th century revealed the raw power of this Faustian Will when scaffolded by techno-capital in the early stages of acceleratory liftoff. Cortes and Elizabeth I would have blushed. For two consecutive generations, men and machines shredded through bloodlines and thousand-year-old civilizational enchantments across the advanced world.

A few men decided it was enough, that Faustian Will had to be extinguished at any cost. The European profile of psychic integrity, strength, and vitality which prefigured across history spectacular achievements and horrors both was designated the authoritarian personality. Conviction in one’s beliefs and ideals, a pre-rational love for one’s like and one’s nation, and bonds of loyalty were marked “illiberal” and intolerant. The constitutive socio-religio-psycho-sexual architectures (the ways we decide who fucks whom) from which Peoples arise were condemned as oppressive and repressive.

Eventually, an autonomous egregore emerged from the charismatic ideas and convictions of these men. That’s what you see today. But make no mistake, at its inception it was these men, together with various accomplices across the halls of power, who set out to kill Western man, to kill the Will responsible for those spectacular 20th century marvels and horrors that they knew too well. They were not wishful, nor mistaken, nor reckless; the death you see around you is not collateral damage from decadent fancy or the inexorable machinations of History, but a desired and calculated result.

I don’t tell you this to discourage you. I want you to understand what you’ve lost to help you understand what you have to gain. But you also need to understand that the ugliness you see is not simply the result of entropy, of lassitude, a momentary lapse in collective better judgement. You’re playing PvP against capable and resourceful players past and present who — deservedly or not — intuitively sense in their bones that it’s either your weakness or their death. Some of you may view these men as contemptible villains, others as sympathetic and perhaps even justified. We have had no World War 3, after all. That’s not nothing.

Whatever your sympathies, the facts stand. The civilization our forefathers knew has been subject to a 70 year slow-motion murder, the inertia’s about to run out, and the wheels are slowly but surely coming off. Almost like dominoes, the old system’s cooperate/cooperate equilibria are transitioning to defect/defect, one by one. Take my previous essay, make a few changes and it will fit almost any social topic. You know this, you have eyes and don’t need me to drone on about it.

So what now? Do we cope with memes and domestic indulgences like “cute quirky healthy diets with fresh cacao and organ meat” and “heckin aesthetic exercise routines”?

Rebirth of the Western Individual

When the Mycenaean empire fell, Dorians from the north brought a Golden Age to Greece. When the Middle Eastern theocracies crumbled, godless Neo-Assyrian charioteers rapidly erected a brutal paradigm of administrative excellence and utter martial dominance. The Christian individual soul emerged from the ashes of Rome.

History alternately blesses Peoples and empowers individuals. Centralizing informational, mechanical, and ideological technologies guaranteed the People’s supremacy over the individual spirit for centuries, until now. The faceless bureaucrat ruled the 20th century. As the paradigm which enabled and advanced him withers away, another character will take his place.

Mechanized warfare favored states over men until drone swarms put a premium on mobility and spontaneous order. Electronic media favored the Cathedral until distribution became commoditized. Economic development favored conventional lifestyles and career choices until economic dynamism and disruption forced knowledge workers to become thesis-driven “investors” in skills and career trajectories whose payoffs depend on status and economic games driven by inscrutable dynamics.

Virtue used to help you make a 10% bonus. Now it differentiates those above the algorithm (artists, founders, leaders) from those below it (addicts, NPCs). Independent thinking used to be a liability or a curiosity. Today it’s all but table stakes for winning agency and psychological integrity. Software, data, and mechanized statistics used to favor tech monopolies. Now each is becoming increasingly commoditized, with the outsize premium accumulating to reputation arbitrage and nimbleness over size and moats. Sense a theme? Sex and women are commoditized. Social networks are commoditized. Labor and techno-capital are commoditized. Culture and spiritual experience is commoditized. Man’s world is becoming clay just as new tools for sculpting are delivered to him; it won’t be long he rises up and decides to shape it in his image. Technology is rapidly transmuting structural obstacles to individual achievement into advantages. 

Marc Andreessen was right but he was wrong. It won’t be technology that eats the old order; it will be the young men who wield it. Dorians had military technology; Assyrians had spiritual technology; Christians had psychological technology. Modern Faustian man will be propelled forward by informational technologies of rapid innovation and coordination. The world of our fathers knew rots in planned self-destruction; if history bears out, it won’t take long for us — small, coordinated assemblies of virtuous young men — to replace it with a new paradigm. Once you see what’s to come, you might even be grateful to Popper. 

Faustian Winter is Coming

It’s so over. We’re so back. Ok Anon, which is it?

Was the Neo-Assyrian conquest fun? On one hand, as even a common charioteer you were gifted an uncommon opportunity to discharge your powers at their height. The fruits of conquest — treasure and wine and women — were yours to lose. But on the other, you had to watch cities go up in flames, women and children wail, legions of old men cry out in agony as they slowly bled out skewered on sharp stakes. A bit grim.

In the coming years, men won’t need to win the fruits of conquest by the sword. Neither will fire and ruin come to the old order at the hands of marching armies. Cities will still burn and fall. Women and children will still wail. Legions of the weak and vulnerable and elderly will cry out in agony. Hearts will be crushed, minds broken, bodies warped, dreams scattered. Unlike with swords and torches, where at least the ruin is quickly done and over with, we’ll get to watch this all take place in slo-mo. Just as talented men come into consummate strength, they’ll watch the West be sacked and corrupted by invisible forces.

If you think the past few years have been bad, there’s more to come. Memeplexes of the past few years just convinced a few to amputate their genitals and breasts; their replacements will convince thousands to amputate limbs, self-lobotomize, and commit “ethical suicide.” ConInc commentators draw fanciful analogies between celebration of abortion and child sacrifice, but in the next two decades mothers will quite literally offer their 10 year old children to be sacrificed. As in, killed. For a few crumbs of clout. It’s #lindy, after all.

Covid lockdowns inspired obsessive social and health scrupulosity and Trump Derangement Syndrome. We’re in for millions in self-impose solitary confinement, legions in algorithm-induced psychosis, entire cities becoming open air asylums where over half of the people you see on the street — even those with middle class occupations — will be loudly ranting and raving, twitching and contorting their bodies, gnashing their teeth and otherwise evidencing acute psychic distress. The more resilient will be stalked by delusional narcissism, paranoia, and fear. The masses will worship ugliness and demand its ubiquity, weakness be their god. Cities and homes will be plundered and burned, women and children raped en mass, men’s bodies piled up — but not in a weekend, and not at the hands of an army. History rhymes. It will be a bit grim. A bruh moment, if you will.

If you think I’m being hyperbolic, imagine what a European from 1880 would think of our society now. Did you think collapse happens overnight? This isn’t the stock market, there’s no deus-ex-machina civilizational bull around the corner, the West is dead and we already live in a pre-dystopian ruin — even if life is increasingly fucking fantastic for the likes of you and I. You only fall faster in free fall.

Triumph over the Adversary

Demoralization is the name of the game. The architects of our fathers’ ruin - untermenschen, decentralized hyperfluid memeplexes, social media algorithms, demons, everything in the convex simplex generated thereby - know that you cannot defeat or neutralize a Sensitive Young Man, you can only convince him to stay his hand, convince him of the hopelessness of his situation. Omnipresent ugliness, sexual chaos, class havoc, economic misallocation - Popper et al have turned our entire social order into an autonomous golem¹ designed precisely to crush your spirit.

How to win? Stop caring. Look death in the eyes and smile. Brace yourself to watch good men warped and pulled into the maw of hell. To witness the horrors of war, stoically. Innocence, naiveté, empathy is over. Cleanse, sanctify yourself, close your heart to compassion. Make it pure, protect it from the world’s clutches and offer it only to God. A clean heart will restore you from any psychic damage the golem can throw at you.

Remember beauty and innocence, joviality and desire, by whatever small tokens you can hold onto - an untouched hamlet near Osaka, the Riace bronzes, Bach at the orchestra - as a soldier remembers his sweetheart by a polaroid stapled to his helmet. You’ll be responsible for once again seeding these and more into the world when it’s all over.

In the mean time. Desire, energy, spirit, heart. Onwards. The world is ready for a new order, a new Individualism. We will bring it forth, and it’ll make for a hell of a story. Cold glory be your star.

1. Yes I’m indulgent with the metaphor here, but to be crystal clear: “muh antisemitism” is for retarded slaves.