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The Obverse Observer
(Nihilism and beyond) serves to explain issues and elements
of nihilism only summarized or missed entirely elsewhere in
this
CounterOrder website. |
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Satanism and Nihilism
Satanism, much like nihilism, is a superficially confusing topic
with a relatively simple underlying message. Much of the
confusion behind Satanism is a direct product of author and
observant carnival worker Anton LaVey’s own calculated
misdirection in the infamous presentation of his book The
Satanic Bible. In the 1960s and 1970s LaVey took occult
imagery and the mysterious mysticism of traditional witchcraft
and devil-worship, as depicted by the Christian Church, and used
that as a crafty cover to present his own views and ideas that
were quite a bit different, and even antithetic, to those
traditional conceptions of Satan worship. So, right there
Satanism is immediately split into two camps, LaVey’s Satanism
originating in his books and later embodied in The Church of
Satan and followers of an ethically-structured philosophy of
egoism, and then the traditional body of witchcraft with stories
of human sacrifice, and so on, that go along with the occult
brand of devil-worship whose adherents really believe in a being
called Satan.
There’s really nothing more to say about witchcraft and occult
Satanism, it’s been around in various forms for hundreds, if not
thousands of years, and it’s all based on imaginary fiction.
Nonetheless, the belief, just like the followers, can’t be
completely ignored because their actions still generate very
real and tangible outcome. However, occult Satanism has nothing
to do with Nihilism, and little if anything to do with nihilism
as philosophy. LaVey’s Satanism is far more interesting, and
does indeed have at least indirect similarities to nihilism, as
many people have already realized.
As an astute observer of human nature working odd jobs at
carnivals, Anton LaVey (born Howard Stanton Levey or Levy)
recognized widespread hypocrisy occurring between professed
moral values, in this case as generally promoted by the
Christian Church, and actual human behavior that is mostly
driven by internal, primarily biologically-derived, urges.
Realizing this rampant hypocrisy is unhealthy for individuals
and society as a whole, and also seeking a path to his own
glorification, Anton LaVey made an attempt to rework the moral
landscape to better allow people to express themselves as they
truly are without being forced to fit into unnatural moral molds
that were only being used by disingenuous religious authorities
to manipulate people against their best interests just to
personally benefit powers in charge.
LaVey wasn’t out to make a new God, and even pushed personal
ego-worship as a path to make everyone a god, hence the
glorification of one’s own birthday. But he did want to make a
religion, meaning a body of rituals and beliefs that would
replace, or at least compete with, those of the dominant
religions. But LaVey’s Satanism ends up suffering greatly from
the heavy-use of theistic imagery. The dark and scary visuals
may attract rebels and those rejected by mainstream society, but
it only makes the confusion over just what Satanism really is,
or should be, even worse. Even the use of the term Satanism
directly implies a worship of, or at least a fixation upon
Satan. Even more critical than misleading appearances, LaVey’s
Satanism remains yet another irrational religion claiming one
true path to salvation, or perhaps more charitably a philosophy
of egoism that resides somewhere between the colorful prose of
Nietzsche and Ayn Rand’s dry anti-social greed as a worldview.
The primary difference remains the use of occult visuals and
calculated misdirection.
Nevertheless, and although LaVey’s motivation may be open to
interpretation, if it was to try and achieve a much needed
transformation of the moral and cultural topology to allow
everyone to act free from hypocrisy and unhealthy cultural
demands,
and to promote
appropriately reciprocal behavior towards others,
then I wholeheartedly agree with the effort.
In the end it doesn't matter what you believe or think is going
to work; the 'will’ or the belief that something is achieved
through sheer force of confidence is just self-delusion.
Magnification of the ego and uncritical belief in
self-righteousness, as well as the
manufactured
hierarchy and elitism that it engenders,
continues to inflict terrible harm to the self and others.
Beware the ego delusion.
It’s really not that complicated, but it does take a certain
amount of careful effort, and that’s why so many try to take the
lazy path by placing superficial imagery over underlying
substance. What really matters is what we can verify and re-use,
the consistent elements and forces of the world around us –
that’s the brilliance of science and a functional methodology.
Fiction may be fine as entertainment, but far too many people
are so mentally isolated and socially-insulated that they can't
distinguish between robust fact and kaleidoscope fiction, let
alone determine actual cause and effect.
Rules for Anarchists
15.06.11
Contemporary anarchists love to form distinctions and
manufacture rules, even as they attack the mores of others
with a distinctly self-righteous tone. Eat this but you
can’t don’t eat that, get married but don’t get married, wear
these clothes but don’t wear those, take these drugs but don’t
use those ones. Some even turn refusing to bathe
into an anarchist statement for others to emulate (against
bourgeoisie society of course)! There’s no limit to the
ridiculousness when you go down this path.
Just be yourself
and leave it at that. Stop trying to get everyone else to live
the same way, especially through moral superiority.
Thankfully,
specious or extraneous rules and distinctions are not the
domain of Nihilists.
Thank You
12.05.11 I want to
take a moment here to express my appreciation to everyone
who’s read my writing with keen interest and expressed their
help and support over the past ten-plus years. It’s not easy
to get anyone to listen today, and even tougher to keep their
attention. Even more phenomenal is the number of people who
come back years later and tell me they’re still living
Nihilism.
Anyone can get an
audience when they're selling mindless entertainment, but when
the topic is something like nihilism, something with a sharp
edge and teeth in it, that’s a real challenge because it
scares people away.
In a human sea of
shallowness and cowardice, you: the fan, adherent, unorthodox
thinker and Nihilist, stand out like flames in the darkness.
Here’s to another
decade, and many more!
– Freydis
Nihilism and Depression
07.05.11 Some say
that nihilism is a condition without values, or one where
values can’t be determined. Intriguingly, this state of mind
is equivalent to that of depression, which is technically
defined as a paralysis of motivation. Depression is
generally viewed as a decidedly negative debilitation, but as
difficult as it may feel when it occurs depression does
nonetheless have beneficial aspects. Depression feels like a
low point, but those that make it through come out stronger
when they gain a healthier balance between the emotional ups
and downs, avoiding blanket pessimism and unrealistic optimism
that skews perception of events and social interactions.
“It [depression] can act as a catalyst
to survival because you have looked over the precipice and
seen the abyss." –
Marjorie Wallace, 2011
For some, clinical
depression ends in suicide, but for many, struggling through
depression helps them revaluate their lives and build a
stronger sense of what really matters. Nihilism can be seen in
the same way – it can destroy you, or it can make you stronger
depending on your internal fortitude and the emotional and
intellectual support you get from family, friends and those
that have survived similar struggles.
Who Defines Who You Are?
25.04.11 People
generally derive their behavior cues from the situation they
live within, primarily because they’re seeking a
self-interested outcome whether they fully realize it or not.
For example, the populist ‘man of the people’ becomes
President and suddenly starts supporting the establishment. Or
the CEO loses their job and money and turn into a rebel
against capitalism. If you consider it for a moment you can
think of specific examples based on your own experiences, and
you can watch a slightly unconventional and entertaining film
on this issue in The Edukators [Die Fetten Jahre
Sind Vorbei] (2005). And this mental malleability is an
important factor to recognize because it undercuts the belief
in the immutability of class, caste and culture.
The ego attaches
to surroundings and institutions and personal values follow
suit. This is a deceptively easy way to go, and the path of
least initial resistance considering the evolutionary forces
that have shaped the human mind for group living. Yet the
price to pay for deriving values and behavior from immediate
surroundings is a shaky and unstable way of living because
these values are arbitrary, situational, and ultimately
hypocritical; anomie and instability inevitably follows as the
group and situation changes.
The only way out
of this conundrum is to step outside of yourself and the
institutions that surround you to try and achieve a sense of
stability and continuity for your own mental health. Many
people employ religious beliefs for this purpose, gaining a
sense of continuity but ending up in an even more precarious
position by relying on blind faith and obedience to mythical
precepts for answers.
But faith and
mystical beliefs are unnecessary when we have so many forces
and factors that are consistent and verifiable. If you look
carefully they aren’t hard to find. Even more important is the
implementation of an analytical methodology to continually and
reliably discern functional facts from transient beliefs and
desires. For your own mental health, just realizing the way
that most people use their situation and the people around
them (or on TV and in their cultural mind) to define their
political and social values puts you on the path to a brighter
future.
Adolescent Fantasy
#122
25.04.11 How
asinine and infantile to believe that ‘we’re better’ and
therefore our clique should kill those that aren’t. It’s
self-assurance for dysfunctional egos.
You don’t have to
massacre to fix our social problems, and to do so merely
creates more trouble than it can ever solve, the cycle of
revenge being the most obvious that even a half-wit should be
able to detect, if they try.
We’ll always have
dumb and incompetent people around, indeed you may even be one
of them (they often deceive themselves by feigning
superiority), but these qualifications are entirely relative
and that’s why they can’t be obliterated. The answer is to
build an environment that’s conducive to self-motivated
improvement and development in mind and body, devoid of force
or threats which are entirely outmoded, crude, and
counterproductive. Fear and intimidation never generates
allies; at best only closeted enemies and usually legions of
desperate opponents.
The
Path of Deduction and the Development of Functional Technology
04.04.10 The Guinea worm is
a horrifying parasite that lives in hot regions of the world
and only infects humans – it’s a three-foot long worm that
grows inside the body and burrows out a year later. The worm
releases an acid that sears through the skin, creating intense
pain and compelling the human victim to seek water for relief,
but there the worm releases thousands of larvae that
eventually find water fleas, infect them, and then perpetuate
an evolutionarily-derived carefully-timed seasonal cycle when
unsuspecting people drink water polluted with the fleas during
times when stagnant water predominates the area.
But this isn’t a
story for nightmares; the tale of the guinea worm reveals many
of the key forces involved in human existence and our
development as a species.
The presence of
the guinea worm doesn’t assist human development, there’s no
evolutionary benefit to its presence in the environment as an
opposing force. There’s no immunity gained from a guinea worm
infection and it doesn’t ‘weed out’ the weak and leave the
strong, it is, like most all negative forces in our
environment, something that only hinders development, sickens
us, causes us to become less productive and able to
participate in society for the benefit of ourselves and
others. Like most harm that resides in the biological
environment, it doesn’t kill the victim; it only maims and
debilitates because the parasite needs the host to live at
least long enough to spread the sickness. The only valid
option we have is to suffer in ignorance or wise up, develop
an effective solution, and overcome.
 For centuries
people have been trying to treat the symptoms, but without
ever learning the cause all anyone has been able to do is try
and pull the parasite out once it emerges. But with as many as 60
worms infecting the victim at once, this is far from ideal
treatment!
Yet through
centuries of witchcraft and superstition the solution has
always been remarkably simple. All that’s required to
eradicate the guinea worm is the continual consumption of
clean drinking water, thereby eliminating the water fleas that
carry the infection. Once again, this demonstrates that the
only way to overcome negative forces like the guinea worm is
through the application of a methodology of reason and
science. You can’t get there through belief and religion, you
can’t eliminate horrific health hazards through superstition,
fear. Only through the process of observation, deduction,
analysis of cause and effect, and crafting an appropriate and
effective solution to the problem. Even though scientists and
researches use this methodology every day and we’ve built all
the functional structures that sustain us with it, it's
remarkable that many, if not most people, either take it for
granted or ignore it in favor of reassuring superstitions!
Part of the problem is persuading people
that guinea worms come from water, says Makoy [Samuel
Yibi of the south Sudan government].
"They believe it comes from God or eating certain animals or
witchcraft. They do not see the point of filtering water," he
says. But once some families try it, the effects are so
dramatic that the rest soon follow. [1]
That’s the
characteristic of a successful methodology – effective results
that can be repeated.
Other benefits
emerge as well. Eradicating totally harmful parasites, like
the guinea worm, creates space in the environment for
symbiotic life to grow that cooperates rather than steals.
This is a potent pattern of existence, similarly, you are not
a single being but rather your body is literally an ecosystem
of billions of micro-organisms functioning together for the
mutual benefit (or at least under the rule of cause-no-harm)
when all is in balance.
Science is such a
radical departure from ingrained habit and past assumptions
that it practically represents a new mind, if not a break and
the beginning development of a whole new human species.
Intelligent men and women arrived at this stage by rejecting
the imprimatur of authority and belief, by the persistent and
often rebellious search for facts and ideas that can stand up
on their own, seeking to understand the nature of forces and
events beyond prejudice and precedent. Rejecting
thought-conformity, leaping beyond the narrowly proscribed
boundaries of cultural convention to explore new places and
ideas while considering alternative views and perceptions.
Nihilism – seeking
answers without the use of belief
In order to solve
a problem, any problem, you have to approach it with an open
mind because the facts don’t care what your opinion is, they
don’t care what you believe in or who you worship, or which
political party you vote for. You can’t determine a valid
answer and develop a sustainable solution by having more guns
than the rest, more gold, or more friends. Even problems
within the seemingly nebulous realm of human events are really
no different. You have to reduce the situation and the problem
into fundamental components, see now it functions, identify
cause and effect, and proceed to develop an appropriate
solution. Even more profound, this is true of everything in
the known universe – the methodology for success is
fundamentally the same everywhere.
1.
Parasite lost: Exterminating Africa's horror worms, by
Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist, 16 March 2010.
Observations of a Nihilist on Christianity and So-Called Christians
To those outside looking in Christianity
certainly has its problems, but it seems that today’s Christians
have even more trouble on their hands. But first, if we're to
objectively criticize either the people or the religion we have
to be as accurate as possible, so let’s examine just what the
Christian religion really is. Obviously, the basis of
Christianity comes from the teachings of Jesus Christ, or rather
the written records and the interpretations of Jesus’ statements
made by his disciples. These ideas and beliefs are what form the
New Testament of the Holy Bible, and that’s all
simple enough. Yet the Bible also has a larger volume preceding
it known as the Old Testament, what is also known to Jews
as the Torah – a chronological tome of Jewish religious
history. This merger of Jewish beliefs and newer Christian
values are why Jesus’ teachings are often referred to in
contemporary discourse as Judeo-Christianity.
Trouble arises when we recognize that the core messages that these two testaments, the Old and
the New, convey to the reader are diametrically opposed,
literally as different as love and hate. This opposition has for
centuries given the written version of Christianity a
fundamentally schizophrenic nature, because those that read the
Old Testament are ordered to hate while those that read
the New Testament are told to love.
In truth, contemporary Christians in their
current dominant form have effectively dropped the
Christianity part of the combo and fully embraced the
Judeo part of the belief set. The creed of love that Jesus
taught his followers has been replaced with the hatred and fear
that permeates the Jewish religion. And hate and fear are really
just two sides of the same coin, but anyway this coin can’t
coexist with love, hence the sad state of affairs that
Christians find themselves in today -- finding new enemies
everywhere and making opponents where none existed before. These
so-called Christians of this Judeo-Christianity minus Jesus have
waged war on everything around them, liberals, secular culture,
homosexuality, birth control, science, evolution, abortion,
pagans, Wiccan's, single mothers, you name it and they’ve got a
well-funded campaign of moral indignation to wipe it out in the
name of God.
Yet, the more enemies the Church and so-called Christian’s
target, the more they find themselves surrounded by new and
angry opponents, and then the more the Church feels under siege
by forces of immorality and evil. Threatening acts generate
threatening responses in a vicious cycle that rapidly spirals
ever downward; exactly what Jesus preached against with
the countervailing forces of love and redemption.
Even if Jesus was a Jew, he nonetheless acted the role
of a revolutionary against the Jewish establishment. After all,
it wasn’t the Romans that wanted him crucified, it was Jewish
authorities that wanted him tortured and killed.
Hate and fear are strong motivators of human behavior,
but an influential force certainly doesn’t’ mean a healthy or
successful outcome will emerge. Hate and fear are normal human
emotions but, like any emotion, without regulation from a
rational mind they quickly lead to defeat and suicide.
The real battle for Christianity isn’t between
secular and religious values (it never was) – it’s within Christianity itself.
Until Christians realize this, they, and their Church authorities,
are only continuing to rail against unnecessary opponents while
fueling growing antipathy through hatred and fear. 19.02.10
Freydis Eiríksdóttir
Freydís Eiríksdóttir, whose father
was Eric the Red, stepsister of Leif Ericson, was a pioneer,
trader, and leader, one of the first Europeans known to have
traveled to North America, around 1,000 years ago as the nominal
leader of a journey to the continent from Greenland and Iceland.
In the North American region they
called Vinland, possibly modern day Newfoundland or even farther
south because the Sagas describe the region as not having any
snow in the winter, the group encountered native people that the
Norse called Skraelings. At first the Skraelings acted like
reasonable trading partners, and they were particularly fond of
anything colored red. Eventually the Norse traded away
everything they had of value, yet the Skraelings still wanted
more. Having brought their cows with them, they did have a
steady supply of milk and so they gave that to the natives.
Unfortunately, because of their Asian descent the Skraelings
were unable to digest the milk and became violently sick after
drinking it. They then concluded that the Norse had poisoned
them and subsequently attacked, having the advantage of much
greater numbers. In typical matter-of-fact tone The Saga of
the Greenlanders describes Freydis battling the angry
Skraelings but then having trouble running fast enough to catch
up with the others because she was (very) pregnant at the time!
Freydis was certainly a formidable woman and definitely not
someone you’d want to mess with.
Living in a violent and difficult
era, Freydis, unsurprisingly, had violent and aggressive
tendencies. According to The Saga of the Greenlanders she
tried to convince her husband to kill the other half of the
Norse party in order to take their share of the trading profits.
When living on the edge of the world and established
civilization, it’s tempting to want to break the rules. But her
husband, Thorvarõur, was still thoroughly hesitant to follow
through on the plot, so out of disgust for his timidity she
picked up the axe and did it herself!
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Archeological
studies at L’Anse au Meadow in Newfoundland revealed that
the Norse really did have settlements with permanent
structures in the New World. Indeed, the Norse were
actually colonizing North America 500 years before the
Spanish arrived! It’s fascinating to consider that
Freydis, or her relatives, could have become the Norse
equivalent of George Washington if given another hundred
years or so.
Unfortunately
for the Norse the climate began to change and became
colder soon after they started trading and colonizing.
Greenland became too cold and frozen to be habitable; the
Norse settlements there were lost along with that
strategic transit point. Europeans didn't return for
hundreds of years. |
Freydis and her party survived the
Skraeling attack. She left Vinland a wealthy woman, albeit with
a tarnished reputation. Nevertheless Freydis was an
exceptionally brave and ambitious woman of remarkable character
and exploit, possibly the only named female North American
explorer of European descent until at least the modern age when
the decline of Christian culture allowed women to act
independently again. 24.10.09
The Traditional Sexual Order has
been Overthrown
While the world was watching television an
incredible revolution occurred that essentially overturns human
sexual reproduction as we know it. Researchers in England have
developed artificial sperm from stem cells, creating another
avenue for technologically-assisted reproduction, but in this
case one that does not require a human male.
Females have the unique ability amongst the
disparate sexes to reproduce themselves. To build a female
requires only one X chromosome, but to build a male requires
two: an X and a Y. The Y chromosome is an appendage whose sole
function is to facilitate the formation of a male, and it’s not
needed to make a female baby. If reproduction can occur without
a Y chromosome then the male becomes fundamentally superfluous
to human reproduction. With the advent of modern technology that
can create sperm from stem cells, or mix two egg cells, the male
sex chromosome is effectively written out of the story, even
raising serious questions about their necessity and future
presence within human society.
From an evolutionary standpoint sexual
reproduction has always been somewhat of a mystery. It’s a
difficult method of reproduction because it requires the
presence and participation of two different parties. Asexual
reproduction is more logical and more efficient, and quite
common. Nonetheless sexual reproduction must serve some benefit
to the species or it wouldn’t have evolved, and indeed it seems
to help by providing an increased ability to resist diseases due
to the constant mixing of genes. Sexual reproduction generates
greater genetic diversity, an asset of great help during
evolutionary development. Fortunately we’re not losing any of
the benefits of sexual reproduction with modern technological
methods; we’re still mixing different genes, although cloning is
entirely plausible as well.
The Y chromosome is actually decaying, and even
without human technology to do away with it we would eventually,
in thousands of years, have to evolve a replacement anyway. [2]
For decades we’ve already been reliant upon medical technology
for reproduction, and a growing
portion of the human population can’t even
naturally reproduce.
The necessity of this medical technology for the
preservation of civilization is no more dangerous or precarious
than our reliance on computers, weather satellites, modern
agricultural techniques, or construction engineering.
After pause for consideration, the
potential in this development for human
reproduction is truly stunning; the revolution has just begun.
16.08.09
Nihilism and Race
Nihilism does not uphold race as a value any more
than it tells us one culture is arbitrarily better than another.
We’re all biological entities built with genetic code and then
defined and refined through our intellectual capacities and our
remarkable ability to adapt, overcome, and prosper. Much of this
success is due to the fact that humans are mentally malleable
beings whose rise to the top of the food-chain has been a direct
result of adopting new ideas and developing new tools and
technology.
Race is a subset of species, sometimes referred
to as a sub-species, and a species is defined as a group that
can reproduce together. Organisms within a species group, like
races, can reproduce together. Human races are relatively new
creations, formed under the intense pressures of natural
selection in the harsh environment of the last ice-age. Because
races can intermix they will, it can’t be wrong in an
evolutionary sense because it’s biologically and physically
possible. The only limitation is geography and the speed of
travel, that’s why human races have been preserved in many parts
of the world. However, as everyone can tell these limitations of
space and distance no longer hold true. Intermixing is what
normally happens when separate populations come into contact;
the only remarkable difference today is the scale of the event.
Whereas in the past it was only a few individuals, for instance
the European conquistadors that explored Central and South
America centuries ago, now it’s entire populations.
[2]
Because many of the physically characteristic
traits of specific races are recessive genes, blue eyes and
blonde hair for example, they will no longer show up in the
superficial attributes of the hybrid population except in rare
cases. This doesn’t necessarily mean that recessive genes no
longer exist at all and go extinct; in fact since the goal of a
gene is to spread as widely as possible they can actually gain
from this. This demonstrates the very complex process of
conflict and interaction occurring on the genetic level, far
beyond what we are aware of at our own macroscopic scale.
We
naturally grow and develop through continual interaction and
synthesis
As even a cursory study of biology in the natural
environment indicates there are a wide variety of strategies for
personal and collective success, with success defined as
adaptation to make the most of the surrounding environment. The
individual freedom to choose your strategy, ideally with serious
thought and consideration involved in the decision, is
critically important because otherwise the trouble arrives when
one despot, or authority group, tries to impose their own values
and strategy upon others. This inevitably leads to dictatorship,
authoritarian brutality, and eventual social collapse.
Actual events and technological developments have
already far outpaced the traditional conceptions of race and
reproduction. The real story is far more fascinating anyway when we
consider the revolution in biotechnology. At some point in the
relatively near future the tools and knowledge of biotechnology
will progress to the point where genes, DNA, and the basic
elements that build life are as fungible as Lego building
blocks. This elemental simplicity is nihilism because it is
ineluctable. Eventually we’ll be able to build life and
rearrange it as desired. The potential is practically unlimited,
for we can become literally whatever we want to be and anything
becomes possible - we can cut and paste, edit out diseases, edit
in new attributes, and even create entirely new life forms. The
real issue is what do we create with these building blocks and
what are the consequences?
To ask ‘is this technology good or bad’ is to ask
a specious question because the technology is inevitable. We
mustn’t hide from it or try and ban what’s physically
possible because, like all technology, as fast as one
narrow-minded clique rejects it another less conservative group
picks it up and gains a massive advantage over the rest.
Instead, it’s time to collectively develop the maturity and
intellectual development to properly deal with the forcers and consequences
of our tools. 14.09.08
“It is not the strongest of the species
that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the
one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles
Darwin
Living in the Past
While Blind to the
Present: The Folly of Nationalism
It’s very easy to romanticize the distant past precisely because
it is beyond our own memory and experience.
Traditionalists and nationalists selectively recall an idealized
history in order to convince themselves that everything was
better way back when, and that if we all just revert to the
‘simpler traditional lifestyle' everything will fit into place
and be perfect again.
Actually, the
overall well-being of everyone has improved drastically over the
past century in direct proportion to technological development.
In general even the poorest of the poor are better fed and
healthier than they would have been just 100 years ago, and the
vast group in the middle now have previously undreamt of
capacities at their command. Indeed this fantastic increase in
well-being has directly led to the trouble of over-population.
So of course we still have significant problems to overcome but
our ancestors had much greater problems plaguing their
difficult and precarious
lives, and with fewer tools at their disposal to solve them!
These changes have occurred so rapidly that we have not
collectively had time to adapt to them, but that doesn’t mean we
cannot or should not adapt to them. Traditionalism is sacrificing the present trying to
live in the past, and yearning for
a way of life that can’t be regained even if it was desirable.
But even more to the point, the fundamental problem with
nationalism is that there are more groups of people calling
themselves a nation than there is physical space to create their
nations. Israel and Palestine is a classic example of the
problem of nationalism. Both groups require land to be called a
nation yet their claims overlap, so the contest descends into a
pitiless war between two implacably opposed sides that slaughter
each other in bloody conflict. Europe fought violent and
futile nationalist wars for centuries, millions died on the
battlefield, and nothing changed -- they would just start all
over again a few years later! These wars weren’t even successful
as population growth control! Or look at the Balkans, the former
Yugoslavia, for another prime example of the rotten results of
nationalism. All fractured into tiny nations that aren’t even
viable independent entities, these people have been slaughtering
each other over nationalism for hundreds of years and getting
nowhere because of it. Nationalism is a recipe for stagnation
and decay because you can’t develop and progress when you spend
your time killing your neighbors over differences, real or
imagined.
Nationalism is a
characteristic
disease of delusional authoritarian
egomaniacs.
Once you head down this path every trivial
detail becomes a point of contention and a reason to exclude
someone from the ‘nation’, splintering into even more opposing
sects and generating an endless series of wars for blood and
soil. Nationalists are willing to play because they believe they
can win the war and crush the other side once and for all
through genocide. Yet victory is never guaranteed. National
Socialist Germany was convinced they would win during WWII, yet
the Germans
ended up narrowly avoiding extinction. And one of the main
reasons we have to achieve collective cooperation and not
foolish competition is the state of modern weapons technology.
In an age of nuclear weapons, and even more hazardous chemical
and germ-weapons of mass destruction, warfare no longer
threatens the well-being of an isolated nation; it literally
threatens the survival of all life on our small planet.
Nationalism is toxic glue for holding a group together; it works
for awhile but the disastrous consequences soon outweigh the
short-term benefits.
Nationalist ideologues have always been
reactionary counter-revolutionaries because they don’t have
anything of their own to bring to the table that’s new or widely
appealing. Instead they market unrealistic myths from the past
while usurping and redirecting contemporary competitive
ideologies. This is exactly what Hitler did so effectively
against the communist revolution in pre-WWII Germany, he took
the appealing elements of revolutionary communism while
claiming national ownership over an international
movement,
added racialism, and then repackaged it all as ‘National
Socialism’. The mistake the German people made, and one that
cost the lives of millions of them, was not in choosing National
Socialism over Communism, it was in investing unchecked power in
one individual! This is why, if we allow ourselves to have any
kind of government at all, it must not only be under constant
scrutiny within a robust system of checks and balances, but even
more importantly it must be as impartial and value-neutral as
possible. 06.09.08
The ANUS Deception
The cryptic ANUS (American Nihilist Underground Society)
website is a critical topic that must be addressed unambiguously
because it, and the website Center for Nihilist and Nihilism
Studies (CNNS), are creating significant confusion about
nihilism, and other important topics too. The ridiculous name
and title of ANUS
should arouse at least a minor amount of skepticism as to the
legitimacy and integrity of the person (or people) behind it.
And indeed things are not what they appear. The ANUS website has
changed over time but in its current manifestation it purports
to promote an unusual mixture of heavy metal music and extreme
nationalism packaged as nihilism and marketed to nihilists.
It is
true that both sites do have material that is thought-provoking
and intelligently written, but that is precisely the point. If
they were completely useless they would not serve their true
purpose.
In reality the façade of nihilism is distinctly
disingenuous and only serves to mask a contemporary
manifestation of what are widely considered to be very racist
views.
Analysis of the ANUS and CNNS websites reveals
multiple elements that raise considerable doubt as to the
honesty and integrity of these productions.
A study of the
ownership data and Internet links reveals that ANUS and CNNS are
not independent productions but are actually part of a large web
of connected Internet sites. More importantly when you look at
the bigger picture it gives the game away:
anus com (American
Nihilist Underground Society), amerika
org (Al-Qaeda Appreciation Society of North America),
Anarchy net (Anarchism), antihumanism
com (Anti-Humanism), burzum com
(music of Burzum and writings of Varg Vikernes),
churcharson com (church arson),
continuity.us (Continuity
Movement), corrupt org ("Remaking
Modern Society"), fuckcapitalism com
(anti-capitalism), fuckchrist com
("Support the Judeo-Christian Holocaust"),
genocide org ("genocide,
holocaust, and democide studies"),
hessian org (The Hessian Studies Society),
infoterror com ("Infoterror
Internet Activist Promotions, Inc."),
ihatejobs com ("I Hate Jobs"),
juliusevola com ("Julius Evola: Traditionalist
Visionary"), lostwisdom com
("Lost Wisdom"), necrocapitalist org
("Necrocapitalist"), nihil org
("Center for Nihilist and Nihilism Studies"),
pan-nationalism org
("Pan-Nationalist Movement"),
penttilinkola com ("Pentti Linkola Fansite"),
pragmatism us ("Pragmatism Party
- Traditional National Democratic Party"),
realitynews com ("A look into the
real world"), sataniccoalition com
("The Satanic Coalition"), and zionists
com ("Kahanist National Zionist Party").
ANUS and CNNS serve the same purpose as ‘anarchy
net’, ‘sataniccoalition
com’, and the rest of their panoply of websites – they are
false-fronts that serve as attractive bait designed to draw an
audience into supporting their core values. So,
regardless of their superficial statements,
crafted to be appealing to their target audience anyway, what
they actually preach and promote is rooted in simple racism, or
a worldview that revolves around race and zealous nationalism.
This being the case there is no honest and legitimate need to
invoke nihilism as part of their platform anymore than there is
to invoke Anarchism or Satanism!
ANUS is exploiting nihilism to promote a
derivative
white-nationalist position that is commonly considered to be
racist. For example, look at the ‘ANUS heroes’ listing (anus.com/zine/heroes/)
The first entry is
Pentti Linkola,
“Linkola
advocates dictatorship and eugenics”; then Julius Evola,
who is he? “most significantly described
as a Radical Traditionalist”, or translated at Wikipedia:
“Evola is primarily known for his
involvement in Italian Fascist politics”. Also on the
list of ANUS’ heroes, Savitri Devi who
“emphasized the continuity of ancient Vedic, ancient
Greco-Roman, and modern National Socialist thought”.
Further evidence, they (Vijay Prozak is sometimes cited, but authorship is left unstated on many
articles) self-describe themselves based on
“tribes”, and ANUS is loaded with
references to race, yet at the same time they claim to reject
racism, “I love my African-American
friends as well as my "white" friends (really: different
Indo-European tribes, including Indians, for whom "white" is a
broken general category).” and,
“Because we have evolved differently, not only is race-mixing
insane, but caste-mixing is insane;…” and,
“Further, it's important to realize that
racial separation is not an issue by itself, but part of a
general program of breeding that includes division by tribe,
caste, and finally, eugenics applied to individuals themselves.”
From:
(anus.com/zine/articles/race/)
ANUS continually uses loaded words like
"caste" and "breeding",
employs statements that are vehemently opposed to cultural,
racial, and caste mixing, all the while promoting nationalism
and a very violent elitism that repeatedly threatens to kill
those they don’t like. In one article the author viciously
attacks ‘white nationalism’, yet the collective tone and
rhetoric belies the sincerity of this assault that is, in essence,
a calculated effort to legitimize what is actually the same
product placed in a different package.
The ‘nihilism’ at ANUS is not just centered on race but it’s
blatantly elitist as well. These guys are trying to sell
repackaged white-nationalism to nihilists because they know nihilists are
willing to entertain attitudes that are considered unacceptable
in contemporary culture.
So, now it’s apparent why so many people are
being confused by the ‘nihilism’ from these websites, because it
isn’t nihilism but rather it’s exploiting nihilism in
order to reach a secondary conclusion that promotes dictatorship
and elitism, among other things.
Regardless of the interpretation, whatever ANUS
really is it is not nihilism and should not be mistaken for it.
What’s
Going on Here?
The people that promote ANUS and related sites,
with Corrupt org at the center of the spider web, are a
duplicitous and deceptive lot. And although they typically mask
their agenda behind superficially appealing statements these
characters are not popular anywhere but in their own little
universe and self-manufactured echo-chamber that they endlessly
exploit to magnify their importance far beyond actual reality.
They use agents as relentless apologists, advertisers, and
salesmen to troll message boards, IRC channels, and anywhere
else they can gain access to in order to push their agenda,
which is simply elitist fascism in an ant-heap society (placing
themselves at the top, of course). The reason they are
thoroughly reviled is obvious, besides the hard sell, they go
out of their way to usurp and hijack others wherever possible.
Anyone that gets involved with anyone of them does so at their
own risk.
The reason for the deception is clear when the
true agenda is revealed.
You can’t publicly admit you are racist today because that term
has such a strong negative connotation, so you have to alter the
message to something more appealing and as a result they target
the still widespread aspects of nationalism and xenophobia,
sponsoring racial separation and ultra-nationalism. Indeed it’s
a poignant testament to just how unacceptable these views and
values are within contemporary society that they have to
water-down their core beliefs and mask them behind superficially
benign phraseology. 05.09.08
Nihilism and
Religious Fundamentalism
The interesting article
'US exceptionalism meets Team Jesus' consists of an
interview with James Carroll, a former Catholic priest and
anti-nihilist, who grew up in the halls of military power in the
Pentagon. The interview is certainly worth reading for the
revealing discussion on how militant evangelical Christianity
has infected the United States military from top to bottom. For
instance Carroll points out that,
“At the Air Force Academy, "Team Jesus"
was one of the nicknames for the football team and one of the
most vociferous evangelical Christian proselytizers was the
football coach.” And not only
that but a screening of Mel Gibson’s fundamentalist slasher
flick The Passion of the Christ was force-fed to cadets
as an official Air Force event! The consequences of this
development aren’t hard to calculate, just consider the current
military ‘crusade’ against Muslim Iraq and Afghanistan, but the
focus of my criticism here has to do with something else of
strategic significance, Carroll’s conflation of nihilism with
religious fundamentalism.
Is nihilism the
same as religious fundamentalism?
Catholics seem to have a particularly
intense dislike for nihilism; remember ‘Nihilism
- The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age’ by Fr.
Seraphim Rose? Maybe Catholics are better educated than their
Protestant counterparts; they must read a lot of Newsweek.
Seriously though, whereas Rose equated nihilism with moral decay
leading to evil in the 1960s, Carroll in 2007 equates nihilism
to religious fundamentalism … leading to evil, of course.
Carroll is an apologist for
Christianity. His basic message is,
“Don’t surrender religion to the wackos.”
But the cynical retort that
instantly flashed in my mind when I read that statement was:
what’s there to surrender?! The reason Carroll makes this
point is fairly clear if you think about it. In order to make
his mainstream version of Catholicism safe for all the believers
he has to attack everyone on the fringes. But this arbitrary
differentiation is the crux of the problem with Carroll’s
reasoning. By maintaining that some religion is good and some
religion is bad and the difference is based on how the holy
scriptures are interpreted it creates a serious schizophrenic
contradiction within the belief set. As Brian Flemming realized
in his documentary film The God Who Wasn’t There the
religious extremists and the fundamentalists are actually the
only ones that have any internal consistency in their reasoning
precisely because they take the scriptures in their Holy Book
literally, instead of trying to modify it to fit it into reality
while rationalizing and apologizing for it to the world as the
moderates like Carroll try to do. In response to the simple
question, if you really believe that your faith in God will get
you to heaven and that the world is evil than why not kill
yourself and go to heaven now? The fundamentalists follow the
scriptural reasoning and reply, yes I will! James Carroll's
convoluted response for moderate Catholicism is that our
belief is good because we aren’t extremists but their
belief is bad because they take it too far by actually believing
what’s really written down in the holy book.
A mark of a fundamentalist mindset is
that one's own personal virtue is the ultimate value. The
American fundamentalist ethos of the Cold War prepared us to
destroy the world. In other words, a world absolutely
devastated through nuclear war was acceptable as an outcome
because it reflected the virtue of our opposition to the evil
of communism. Better dead than red. … Better the world
destroyed than taken over by communism. It's profoundly
nihilistic, which is also one of the marks of the
fundamentalist mindset.
Carroll views fundamentalism and
nihilism as the same because, in his view, both are
apocalypse-seeking. And since religious fundamentalism is just
extreme religious belief then extremism is the same as nihilism.
In fact most all religions have a
salvation / redemption / change element within their set of
beliefs, not just Christianity with its ‘born-again’ mythology.
Most religions seek a salvation and redemption through radical
change. So to equate salvation with nihilism is simply to state
that both seek a change in the current state of events! So
what?! Nihilism and fundamentalist religion both seek radical
change, even though it is for completely different reasons.
Carroll is clearly using nihilism as a pejorative association
not a substantive one; the connection is purely illusory. Change
is sought by many people, ideologies, and beliefs so without
including the reasoning motivating it this just leads to a
fraudulent association.
Carroll unintentionally reveals, once
again, that the real problem has nothing to do with nihilism, or
even destruction-seeking motivations, but it has everything to do
with belief and religion, be it fundamentalist or otherwise.
Foolish beliefs and unchallenged assumptions pervade an American
society that prides itself on ignorance and religious
righteousness.
[I]f Americans are upset with the war
in Iraq today, it's mainly because it failed. If we could have
"ended evil" with this war, it would have been a good thing.
It goes back to the joke you began with: [How many neo-cons
does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer: Neo-cons
don't believe in light bulbs, they declare war on evil and set
the house on fire.]
if we have to destroy the world in
order to purify it of evil, that's all right. It's the key to
the apocalyptic mindset that Robert J Lifton has written about
so eloquently, in which the destruction of the Earth can be an
act of purification. The destruction of Iraq was an act of
purification. Even today, look at the rhetoric that's
unfolding as we begin to talk about ending the war in Iraq.
It's the Iraqis who have failed. They wouldn't yield on their
"sectarian" agendas. These people won't get together and form
a cohesive government. Now, we're going to let them stew in
their own mess. We're going to withdraw from this war because
they're not worthy of us.
Willful
belief-based ignorance is easily exploited by venal authorities
to gain popular support for launching wars based on religious
symbolism, all for the most crass and materialistic of reasons
like oil, power, and money. In this kind of environment
characterized by the moral nose ring Nietzsche warned us about
it’s imperative that, once and for all, we finally cut the
strings of belief that corrupt authorities use to bind and
manipulate the people like marionette puppets, so the super-rich
can't sponsor wars and trigger conflicts for private profit
while using their wealth and special influence to insulate
themselves from the negative consequences everyone else has to
suffer through. 30.09.07
Winners are
just the first losers
in a foolish competition |
November
2004 |
Should I Vote?
Is the glass half full or is it half empty?
Deciding whether to vote or not is the same sort of question –
the answer depends on your perspective and sentiment at the
given moment, but the short answer is yes; let me
explain.
Politics is the shit in life you can’t escape
from
so even though the dominant
political parties that almost always win the elections (Democrat
& Republican, Labour & Tory, etc.) don’t represent me or my
interests, and probably don’t represent you either, the
decisions they make in office will still affect us nonetheless.
That leaves us in a quandary. If we don’t vote at all they will
definitely win the election and can claim a mandate based on the
sizeable majority of the votes that put them in office. If we do
vote and participate in an election system that is a sham we
risk justifying it, but can at least exert a small influence upon
the outcome while at the same time gaining a legitimate
allowance for criticism by virtue of participation. I like to
think of voting as renewing my license to criticize the
democratic political system.
If you look at the low voter turnout in the
average election in the United States, for example, the
pseudo-democratic system doesn’t need mass participation to
justify itself. So I think to criticize voting as simply
supporting a broken system is misleading and perhaps even
over-simplified. Everyone is told that what we have now is
representative democracy and it’s the greatest thing invented
since sliced bread so very few people are willing to take the
risk of openly criticizing it. Consequently the most practical
and rational option is to vote in a way that maximizes the
message being conveyed to the elected officials. The two ways to
do this are:
Many have rued the truism that if voting
changed anything it would be illegal. But we have to put
voting in perspective. Don’t expect radical change to occur but
don’t completely discount the impact that your vote can have –
it may not be much but it is there if you want to use it. This
brings me to another major question.
Why are voters so afraid to vote for a minor
party candidate even though the two party duopoly is so
obviously corrupted, useless, and even outright malevolent towards
the public?
I think part of it is a generational gap. Voters
that are middle aged and older are still convinced that they can
elect Party Left or Party Right and solve everything.
Conversely, skepticism and cynicism towards the two party
duopoly is widespread among youth today.
Another major impediment to seeing what’s really
going on is the sports spectator effect – the popular
desire to be a part of the winning team through vicarious
association, in this case by voting for the candidate that gets
elected. People have to stop thinking about ‘winning’ in the
election. Nobody is really winning anything in this
system except the candidate that gets their meat-hooks into
office and the lobbyists and special interest groups they are
funneling the kickbacks too. Voting just to be a vicarious
winner, instead of voting for the candidate that really
represents you, is about as asinine as you can get, yet that is
exactly how many voters behave!
Finally, the people that vote most often are the
ones that feel they have something invested in the social and
political order and as such they tend to not want it to change
radically, or at all, because that could negatively impact their
interests. This is why the richer the voter is the more likely
they are to vote for a conservative, and vice versa. People that
are disenfranchised and disaffected have much less invested in
the status quo and thus they typically see no benefit to
participating or supporting it and so they don’t vote.
Unfortunately this short term self-interest only serves to
justify and perpetuate the status quo, creating a self-fulfilling
prophecy. 11.09.06
The U.S. presidential race, impassioned almost to the point of
hysteria, hardly represents healthy democratic impulses.
Americans are encouraged to vote, but not to participate more
meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is
yet another method of marginalizing the population. A huge
propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these
personalized quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, "That's
politics." But it isn't. It's only a small part of politics.
The population has been carefully excluded from political
activity, and not by accident. An enormous amount of work has
gone into that disenfranchisement. During the 1960s the outburst
of popular participation in democracy terrified sectors of
privilege and power, which mounted a fierce countercampaign,
taking many forms, until today.
Bush and Kerry can run because they're funded by similar
concentrations of private power. Both candidates understand that
the election is supposed to stay away from issues. They are
creatures of the public relations industry, which keeps the
public out of the election process. Their task is to focus
attention on the candidate's "qualities," not policies. Is he a
leader? A nice guy? Voters end up endorsing an image, not a
platform.
The regular vocation of the
industries that sell candidates every few years is to sell
commodities. Everyone who has turned on a TV set is aware that
business devotes enormous efforts to undermine the markets of
abstract theory, in which informed consumers make rational
choices. An ad does not convey information, as it would in a
market system; rather, it relies on deceit and illusions to
create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices.
Much the same methods are used to undermine democracy by keeping
the electorate uninformed and mired in delusion.
From: Interventions, by Noam Chomsky,
pages 98-99, 2007.
Film Review:
Flight from Death
Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality
(2003) is a documentary that uses stock footage, vague location
backdrops (usually cemeteries), and brief interviews with
colorful professors you’ve never heard of in schools you didn’t
know existed to attempt to answer the inveterate problem of
cosmic meaning and human mortality. Although the film subtly
presents itself as an independent and objective analysis this is
slightly misleading because it actually approaches the issue
based on the fringe psychological theories of author and
cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker. Yeah I never heard of him
either. Becker, and thus the film, basically believes that
everything humans do is about death denial.
 To
the credit of the researchers and philosophers behind this
effort they have attempted to find quantitative evidence to
support their contentions. However the results of their one
study conducted on college-age volunteers seems dubious
considering that multiple conclusions could still be drawn from
the facts. But anyway, Becker and the film conclude that
violence and the worst excess’ of human behavior are a product
of death anxiety. Religions are personalized death denying
illusion. Evil is created by the attempt to form a utopia
free from evil.
The answer to all
this trouble, and I’m using the actual words from the film, are
to practice tolerance and kindness towards others. Further,
illusions are necessary and unavoidable so we must therefore
strive to create life-sustaining illusions rather than to
overcome them. The seemingly obvious fact that this is simply
yet another effort to form a utopia free from evil, and is
therefore evil, is not addressed. Indeed the film delivered a
rather stunning conclusion considering the fairly reasonable
intellectual buildup preceding it.
In fact illusions
are not necessary; illusions are intentionally
manufactured to mask things that people don’t want to perceive.
Differences of perception certainly do exist within the realm of
human consciousness but that should not be an excuse to
disregard the much more considerable common elements, indeed the
very common concerns that the film used to construct much of
their views! The flaws in Becker’s views are more than benign,
they can become a very harmful way of thinking because it leads
towards an obsession with physical life extension, as the film
mentions. In fact death is just as important as life and most
people live too long as it is – that’s a major problem we are
just now facing as individuals of the human species are now
living longer than ever before in history. The most reasonable
answer to draw from Flight from Death is to simply
recognize death as an inevitable part of life, free from
exaggerated mythology and excess fear.
 The
film is, in my view, overly philosophical and not materialist
enough in approach but it is intellectually compelling
nonetheless. Unfortunately the film does not address or offer
any explanation for suicide actions, only for the common
responses to the violence. Discussion of the topic of suicide is
conspicuously absent from the documentary.
I found the film
difficult to pay attention to mostly because the topic does not
lend itself well to a cinematic format for delivery. The vocal
portions are complex enough that it takes effort to interpret
what is being said while the video is often showing extraneous
stock footage barely related to the narration so it becomes
distracting towards the effort to digest the concepts in the
film. Note: the subconscious message content (possibly) included
in this film has not been rated or reviewed.
As an example of a contrary, materialistic,
argument that is at least as intellectually compelling, but
probably not any more accurate in a holistic sense, read this
one:
It's the money, honey by Chan Akya. I've encountered
fairly convincing views that human actions are all motivated by
a desire for sex; Chan Akya thinks it’s money but the point is
it could be sex, death avoidance, money, genes, memes, or
something else. Human actions are driven by a multitude of
factors, it doesn't have to be only one and it's probably a
combination that depends on circumstance as well as historical
and cultural influences. 06.01.07
|
"What makes being a soldier great is
the nobility of it — good fighting evil. If you lose that,
all this sacrifice is for no good reason."
- Maj. Peter Kilner, West Point. From:
Combat stress takes toll, June 14, 2006. |
 |
Philosophical versus Political Nihilism, or why can't we all
just get along?
When it comes to the realm of action and thought
there are two attitudes that characterize a categorical
breakdown. One group is convinced that ideas are all that really
matters, that theory is of prime importance over substance –
this is why it is referred to as philosophy. And then there are
those that are convinced practice, substance and action, are
what really matter. These two attitudes are what characterize
the views of philosophical and political nihilism.
The philosophers don't want to get involved in
seeing the notion turned into practice because it fractures all
their pretty beliefs and ideas with messy realities and
pragmatic compromises. While the practical builders don't like
being slowed down by dogma and theories that look nice sitting
on a shelf, like a book or a trophy, but can't be integrated
into real life. They are aware that without a test the
hypothesis is not any more useful than the paper it is written
on. Argument between the two is mostly a waste of time because
no real ground for compromise exists, for as adamant as the
pragmatists will state that the practice is what matters, the
theorists will maintain the opposite. Consequently, most of the
philosophical nihilists don't want to see nihilism turned into
Nihilism because the process is messy, it's dirty and it
inevitably ruins many of the cherished notions they hold dear.
Far too many of them treat their conception of philosophical
nihilism as a dogma that cannot grow and evolve because that
means accepting change as well as a past, a present and a future
that operates independently outside of them.
For a historical example of this conflict compare
Karl Marx to V.I. Lenin. It’s ironic that Marx was so concerned
with the struggles and triumphs of human labor but never worked
a day of manual labor in his life. In fact his family nearly
starved because he wouldn’t get a paying job. His ideas written
down had a significant impact upon millions of people, but that
impact was largely a result of the efforts of organizers like
V.I. Lenin. Marx would no doubt have criticized Lenin for
corrupting his beautiful theories but nonetheless Lenin turned
Marx’s writing into reality.
Another example, a perfect contemporary example,
is that of Jeffrey Skilling architect of the new energy trading
techniques at Enron incorporated. Skilling was, and still is, a
firm believer in the concept of the idea in primacy, that the
idea is what really matters not the practice or execution.
Skilling came up with a new form of accounting that allowed him
to book profits now on the predicted future
revenue from his ideas. So in other words if the concept of
trading energy futures cannot produce a profit today because it
is too new to have an established history but five years from
now it could be worth, say, one billion a year, then we can
count that profit today on the company books. It’s a new economy
after all and don’t the brilliant people deserve to get paid for
the brilliant ideas they come up with?! Skilling and others in
the top management at Enron thought so. Now several years later,
after the multi-billion dollar meltdown of their corporation,
Skilling still maintains his complete innocence while on trial
for financial fraud so massive it broke records. For a much more
detailed explanation of this astounding process watch the
documentary Enron: the smartest guys in the room (2005)
DVD ¹, and find out why they didn’t ask why enough.
Please don’t misunderstand my intent. Ideas are
important, theory is important too, and it would be fantastic if
we all could book revenues on our expected future profits or
change the world with just a graduate level philosophical
dissertation. But there’s also this other force at work known as
practical, functional existence, i.e. reality, and it has a
nasty way of devastating anyone foolish enough to ignore it.
Nearly all philosophy if adopted literally necessitates the
contravention of known reality. Take, for example, the
assumption that nihilism rejects all forms of organization and
authority. Even if this was an inextricable tenet of nihilism,
(it isn’t) such a notion simply can’t be internalized. In fact
no human individual or endeavor can survive well or do much of
anything without organization. We are social creatures and
organization is what we do. That is why the second definition of
nihilism is in the dictionary, the one that many of the
existential nihilist types either refuse to recognize or simply
ignore outright. Not only that, but as hundreds of participants
at the Symposium forum and Online Nihilism group demonstrate on
a daily basis, one can be a member and a supporter of a group
and still hold independent thoughts. Imagine that!
Theory and practice can assist each other but sometimes they
simply have to agree to disagree and allow evolution and the
testing process to deliver a verdict. 16.04.06
Conservative,
Liberal, Nihilist -- Political Dimensions of the 21st
Century
What do the words
‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ really mean? These terms are
typically employed to describe political views but they also
apply to other values and views in life as well, even to such an
extent that conservative and liberal, right and left,
essentially arbitrary terms that mask substantive worldviews,
are used to instantly categorize entire segments of the
population.
Politics
is about change, you either want it or you don’t, and this
fundamental divide serves as the basis for classical political
opposition. The conservative side is the easiest to explain
because of its fundamental simplicity - it strives at all costs
to preserve the current economic and political order as much as
possible. Conservatism isn’t rocket science and it rarely has
anything to do with objective, critical analysis, but instead
it’s simply an expression of primal greed and fear. If you’re at
the top of the socio-political pyramid then you have much to
lose (it’s a long way down) and risk is more of a hazard to your
personal well being than it is as a potential source of reward.
Conversely, those in the bottom ranks have little to lose and
everything to gain.
Then fear enters the
equation and makes conservatives out of many that have much to
gain and little to lose. It’s also true that being rich is a
relative condition and this is why fear of loss is such a
powerful motivation when used for political gain, there's
always a class below to create a fear of falling, indicating
just how much worse things could be if change goes awry, or
if it occurs at all.
The conservative
mentality is an expression of an intense need for stability and
the comfort of routine and habit. This desire for safety is so
strong that it intentionally seeks to expunge all challenges to
tradition, established beliefs and rituals. Consequently, the
defining characteristic of the conservative label is the
inability to tolerate ambiguity. Conservatives want
everything to be clearly defined; they see things in black and
white, figuratively speaking. Reality to a conservative consists
of good and bad, right and wrong, devoid of alternatives outside
those binary poles and without recognition of anything in
between. The conservative mentality forces nature, interactions
and all events into one of two opposite categories. The nature
of actual events is nothing like this, as anyone objectively
analyzing human events quickly realizes that shades of gray are
what define interactions and outcomes, not absolutes. But this
is the point; the conservative worldview is an artificial one
and the end result of a conservative mentality is a completely
synthetic way of life; this is a world of corn syrup flavoring,
bleached grains and American ‘cheese’, a world where control of
nature, people and events becomes an imperative necessity
because anything less inevitably leads to exceptions, shades of
gray, and a sudden collapse of the simplistic, Manichean view of
world events.
|
The
Spectrum of Modern Political Philosophy |
May 2005 |
The conservative
mindset allows for only one correct view and explanation of
events at any given moment and refuses the legitimacy of all
alternative views and explanations. This is a zero-sum mentality
that sees everyone as either a winner or a loser and approaches
life events accordingly. In the West, monotheistic religious
beliefs magnify the influence of conservatism, and not
surprisingly the majority of conservatives are church-attending
believers. Conservatism is characterized by a hierarchy of
leaders and followers, of obedience and servitude. This
simplistic order makes the construction and coordination
of large scale projects, like pyramid building and wars, much
easier than without it.
Liberal is a more
complex and nuanced package but it can be basically defined as
the acceptance of ambiguity within human events. Generally the
greater the degree of education and worldly experience the more
liberal the individual becomes because they begin to see all the
shades of gray, the natural differentiations and differences
that exist within alternate views, opinions and potential
solutions. This is a world of whole foods and soy products,
where spiritual problems are likely to be resolved through
paganism and atheism rather than monotheism. The liberal mindset
allows for the simultaneous legitimacy of multiple of views and
explanations but still maintains that mine is probably better
than yours because ego and cultural favoritism are natural
extensions of individual (and group) self-preservation.
By now we can begin
to detect the appeal of the conservative viewpoint when
considering the complexity that perceiving multiple alternate
ideas and solutions creates. The more possibilities that are
included in the decision-making equation the more complex and
time consuming the decision becomes, but the more accurate that
final decision will be.
So if we take these
two primary views and extend them to logical extremes across a
spectrum of variation, what do we get? A general depiction of
the ultimate conservative social system can be found in the
insect world, wherein every being functions as a separate organ
to support a larger body or community, and where every worker is
simply a genetic extension of every other worker. Independence
is incomprehensible and no more possible than the left lung
enjoying a separate life and consciousness from the right lung.
In the ultimate conservative world nothing changes on a
macroscopic scale, even as the cells and individual working
components are continually living, dying and being replaced by
functional duplicates. Individual purpose can never extend
beyond the need to support the body, and the purpose of the body
is limited by the need to support the workers. This
organism seeks resources, consumes them, delivers the basic
nutrients to the internal components, and continues this cycle
as long as it can sustain itself. In this view the unit of scale
is macroscopically measured. Significance is based upon the size
of the pyramid, the gross profit of the corporation, or the
amount of land and resources the nation controls.
The ultimate liberal
social system constructs significance based upon the gross
influence of the component, the motive force and mental capacity
of the individual. While the conservative order functions from
the top down, the liberal order operates from the bottom to the
top; the components influence the system instead of the system
influencing the components.
When stated in extreme form the root views become
evident. We can now see why liberals and conservatives can argue
endlessly and still remain convinced that each side holds a
singular truth. The error is in the belief that one sides holds
an exclusive truth when in fact both liberal and conservative views
contain valid elements.
Both of these extremes exist within any unit;
after all, every corporation has its individual workers just as
every individual person has its own cells and organs. But what
is the eventual purpose of it all? Since values are an extension
of the goals, which value do we place at the top? Do we put
people in primacy or do we put the body; the components or the
system? Both sides need the other but only one can be in the
lead, only one value can be held at any given moment.
Does one need the other more? Can a person exist
without a society? Yes they can but not very well, and they have
no purpose either since their life is devoid of social context
with which to structure their values and existence. But can a
society exist without people? No, not at all.
A contemporary
example of the liberal versus conservative value-problem is
evident in the issue of corporate rights. Is the company more
important than the people? Can one exist without the other? What
rights does a business corporation have in comparison to an
individual, especially considering that corporate entities are
quick to usurp and negate the rights and values of the
individual [Read:
Trained to Perform Evil
and Finding Perspective in a
Mad World]
Companies are notorious for immoral and unethical actions
despite being composed of mostly moral and ethical individuals,
just as states, both totalitarian and democratic, are notorious
for starting wars of aggression and domination despite the
peaceful and pacifist characters of the people that compose
them.
So, although both
the conservative and liberal views hold core truths the values
characterizing the goals and aspirations of each side are very
different. The two views are clearly in competition with each
other. Nonetheless, when viewed from both sides this argument
would seem to lack any functional resolution.
Fortunately, if we
put the issue in proper perspective then it can be resolved.
Corporations and states are purely structures of convenience,
and indeed they are products of individual values and not the
other way around. Corporations and states have no independent
existence apart from the individuals composing and sponsoring
them. Although corporate and state entities can protect the
individual they can just as easily destroy them. Conversely, the
power of the individual is noticeably proscribed by the powers
of every other individual within a system that grants a greater
degree of influence to individuals than to the corporate and
state collections of individuals.
People aren’t
biological organisms in the same form as insects. People have
independent motive forces, goals and values apart from the
collective. The individual with a separate consciousness and
motive powers forms a practical and very versatile component
capable of constructing systems and structures in a collective
fashion that are much larger than any single contributor. Unlike
insects that can only build one kind of hive society, humans can
form collective structures in an almost unlimited shape and
form. The form of that institution does not have to be one that
exploits or abuses its constituents. The necessary solution will be a
hybrid of both left and right, or more accurately, something
that transcends the perceptional limitations of classic liberal
and conservative views. We need a new hierarchal system, one
that is a non-rigid, adaptable structure capable of growth and
change while at the same time holding the contents together,
like a balloon.
Despotic
‘conservative’ regimes can force people to cooperate just as
capitalist ‘liberal’ democracies can trick people into
cooperating, but can we build a system where cooperation occurs
out of genuine personal desire? Just as state governments have
given way to transnational corporations, and corporations are
beginning to be challenged by NGOs, so this progression
will lead to transnational collective providing more than just commercial needs,
but including social needs as well.
Instantaneous
worldwide communication technology means that physical location
is no longer the limitation it once was. One day we will be able
to pick our preferred form of government just as we can change
churches or school districts today. The 21st century can
witness the advent of the voluntary state system. Capital need
no longer reign supreme. Material support will no longer have to be paid in
cash, like taxes, but can be paid in labor.
Life shouldn’t be about what you
own or the people you know or how much money you have, because
none of these things reflect real effort or human utility and
can be taken through
inheritance, theft, or special personal connections; they don't necessarily reflect the true capabilities of the individual
behind them. Life can be about what you produce and what you
contribute to society.
But the achievement of this new socio-political dimension will
not occur instantly one day just as it will not occur without
effort because it's in direct competition, and even opposition,
to the existing authority system.
12.11.05
Where’s the Truth?
The primary process
under the rubric of nihilism is skepticism, it is to take as
little for granted as possible and that includes nihilism
itself. Philosophical nihilism is inherently contradictory, for
instance to state that ‘no truth exists’ is just as rigid and
principled as the more common assertion that a singular truth
does exist. Nevertheless some people still try to use one or the
other. Both are absurd, although the one of philosophical
nihilism is more obvious.
Absurdity can be entertaining and
enlightening but only in the way that outdated fad becomes
kitsch and is therefore ‘cute’ and collectible. A message is
contained within it all but it’s not a facile one. Absurdity
really indicates a lack of complete information; absurdity is
an error message.
The fact that some
people attach so strongly to either one I think demonstrates
that an irrational undercurrent runs through human nature. In
the case of ‘no truth’ (anti-science) it's part rebellion, part
ignorance and part fear: fear of order that might defeat their
own beliefs in self-determination, or more specifically the
belief in the right to ‘do whatever I want to do’. In the case
of the other pole, the ‘one truth’, it’s a wish to have
everything taken care of and the belief in a holy deity that
controls everything and all blessing will follow from obedience.
Science originates
from the ‘one truth’ view and not too surprisingly it generates
some intense antagonism in the public because it doesn’t make
either group happy, it undercuts free-will and also God. But the
ideas behind science are completely sound: to try and find some
pattern in the disorder, to try and employ some kind of
consistent algorithm to find consistent results. I think the
scientific method is the best tool of its kind around, so far,
but it has its limits. Mikhail Bakunin once stated,
"Between
thought and life there is a wide abyss."
Science can generate completely accurate and truthful statements
but upon application in human society they can fail miserably.
Even more, technology often fails even after science succeeds.
Everyone wants to
find ‘truth’ but it can’t be found like a search for a singular
entity, like some jungle explorer searching for a legendary gold
idol. The search for ‘truth’ is the search for a definition. As
humans we all start from a very distorted perspective because in
order to exist we must value our life, yet the continuing order
of the universe cares not a bit about us one way or the other
and suicide changes nothing. But the universe is definitely not
irrational; in fact if anything it is maddeningly predictable,
at least on the size-scale that we exist at. Humans live by
values but the universe does not – it offers possibilities but
does not favor one over the other. Ultimately moral right and
wrong are products of the ego, after all no one wants to be
‘wrong’ and everyone wants to be ‘right’!
Even amongst the
disparity a common element can be found and I think that the
natural survival instinct will suffice. It creates an internal
sense of true and false but one that is not necessarily
transferable to others. Nihilism can state that the overall
picture does not create any absolute right and wrong, true or
false, but the concept is nonetheless quite significant to the
individual. So it could be said that true and false are both
absolute and relative at the same time. The interface between
all of the viewpoints creates a deceptive complexity; our sense
of reality is the interface between all of them perpetually
interacting. Indeed, trying to find a truth here is an atrocious
calculus problem! This is why scientific reduction often fails
in deciphering human actions and living reality but adding it
all up also proves problematic because it’s never accurate, only
an estimate. Truth, at least on the social level and perhaps a
universal level, is statistical. 20.06.04
The Decay of Chinese Culture: Nihilism Goes to
China
As any linguist will
tell you studying a language can generate significant insights
into the nature of the culture and people using that language.
In this case I’m referring to the Chinese written language.
Whereas western culture and languages are digital and stem
from a deconstructive worldview, the eastern languages,
particularly Chinese which is the forerunner of most other East
Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese, are self-contained
and result from a fundamentally holistic worldview. In other
words instead of breaking things down in order to understand
them, they see things as static without further need for
understanding. So it shouldn’t be surprising to find out that
Chinese culture is extremely authoritarian – don’t question
authority or the Party line – just do what you’re told. The
implied duty of every child growing up in this culture is to
obey authorities and conform to their expectations.
In Chinese writing
the meaning has to be extracted from the relationships between
the component symbols, so context is imperative to communicate
in any useful manner. This creates a language that appears complex
because it relies so heavily on a shared understanding of
cultural history to create meaning in the sentence. Chinese also
seems ‘poetic’ and ‘mystical’ because it is so fundamentally
limited in its ability to convey a concise idea or concept
unlike a letter based alphabet that can be used to create an
almost infinite array of new words and concepts to communicate
new ideas and thoughts.
Because Chinese culture relies so
heavily on centralized authorities to dictate orders and policy
for the people to obey it creates an inherently temporary
situation since it’s based entirely on sycophancy and blind
obedience rather than questions, thoughtful criticism, and
adaptation to new situations. This is not to say that the
Chinese can’t take advantage of an opportunity for after all
there are quite a few newly rich entrepreneurs in China today,
but it does mean that the Chinese authority system is very quick
to usurp the motivation of individual effort in order to
maintain its dominance over the country. In fact the communist
party in firm control of China today is downright paranoid when
it comes to challenges to their power – economic, political or
religious. Even a cult as seemingly innocuous as the Falun Gong
generates the most repressive and severe police reaction from
the Chinese government. The Internet is tightly monitored and
censored, just as all the news and information is filtered
through the lens of official opinion. Official statistics are
created based not on what is really happening but on what the
Party wants to see, indeed this is the perfect example of how
China is run today and has been for time immemorial – Chinese
authorities are motivated and supported in all their endeavors
by willful delusion.
This is important to
recognize amidst the current hype over the rise of China as an
economic, military, and political power. Although the Chinese
people themselves have immense potential and can and do express
it when given the opportunity, the present Chinese communist (or
some say quasi-fascist) government will do everything it can to
stop this when it occurs outside officially approved channels.
And the Communist Party has no plans to rescind power anytime
soon; this is another tenant of Chinese authorities - never give
up power and never face reality because criticism is the enemy.
China’s grip of world trade is not nearly as solid as it may
seem today. There’s nothing that China exports that can’t be
made elsewhere and China’s cheap labor is simply a result of
government subsidies. Even regardless of this the massive
overproduction going on in China today is flooding world markets
and will eventually initiate a deflationary spiral downward in
price and profit.
So even though
Chinese culture has thousands of years of history that compel
obedience to official rules and precepts and negates independent
thought, the Chinese people nonetheless remain thoroughly
self-centered and as the flow of information leaks into their
closed society new ideas are changing their attitudes. Things in
China today are beginning to change because the social hypocrisy
has become unsustainable. The distance between the Party’s
version of truth and the truth of actual reality is a rapidly
widening rift fracturing Chinese culture.
Young people in
China don’t believe in the Communist Party, they don’t believe
in their vaunted leaders and their self-congratulatory charades,
and increasingly they don’t buy into the archaic culture and its
values that are continually claimed so superior to the rest of
the planet. Many of them still remain ardent nationalists though
and this is one tool the Central Party can still use to whip up
enthusiasm for their projects and control the populace by
directing their boiling anger over internal problems against
foreigners. Nationalism is one of the last vestiges holding a
broken China together but a corrupt regime can’t exploit that
sentiment forever. All the old gods in China are dead or dying,
communism killed religion and now communism is dying too. A
rising undercurrent of nihilism exists in China today, an
inevitable result of blatant social hypocrisy, egregious
government repression, abuse, and authority’s attempts to
control the minds and bodies of their subjects. 01.05.04 &
17.11.08
Existence is the Cruelest Joke
Life is a diversion
from the inevitable ending, ideally in a constructive way but
often not. After all, isn't it ironic that the more free time we
have the more we try to escape it?!
 Everything
beyond survival consists of the search for escape; collecting
money or toys, mindless entertainment, drugs, etc. Artist Ed
Kienholz called a bar a ”sad
place, a place full of strangers who are killing time,
postponing the idea they are going to die."
That pretty much sums it up.
Boredom is Hell
Nietzsche saw
meaning through the continual process of valuing; an intriguing
notion. However since 'good' and 'bad' can only really be
applied retroactively it would seem to be a faulty one for
guidance. I have a sneaking suspicion the insects and Fascists
are right on one thing: life is just about doing things, even
regardless of the point or value of that action. Simply doing
things together creates community and camaraderie, it's not
complicated! Life is action, death is inaction.
Peace is Non-Being
There is no such
thing as nothingness, meaning that the abstract concept of
nothingness is a religious (primarily Judaic/Christian) fantasy,
for all absence is relative. Something will always exist in some
form in some place. Non-being is another issue; once you’re gone
you’re gone forever but parts of you can remain physically
through genetic continuity and memetically through fame and
ideas.
Forcing the Creeping
Inevitable
All
existence is struggle, life is war and peace is death; suicide
is just getting there prematurely. Not considering the act of
dying indicates a lack of consideration for the process of
living. So, to all those who've sought peace, even bliss, in
non-being - this glass is for you. 14.10.03
How many killed by
the Church?
How many killed by nihilism?
Any questions?
The Sham of
Pop-Anarchism
Anarchists have an
admirable spirit and a motivated attitude but what they apply that energy
towards is rarely, if ever, useful. Anarchist's efforts generally serves the
opposite of their stated desire - it doesn't defeat authority it
empowers it! Anarchism seems to be no better than the machine it
replaces and even worse than capitalism because it's a
manufactured ideology that has no basis in reality or human
nature. After years of abuse, exploitation and poor leadership,
Anarchist ideals are so watered down as to be laughable. Today
"Libertarian Socialists" run for public office while others
throw rocks and deface public monuments. No wonder the word
anarchy itself has become just another word for mindless
juvenile delinquency with a sugarcoating of political
self-importance.
The fact that so many anarchists
don't want
to listen to reason or alternate opinion, but usually respond
with invective and heated rhetoric, is a screaming klaxon
testifying to the religious dogma that they adhere to. Nor do
they stop and question the legitimacy or usefulness of the
apocryphal causes they inveigh against, a testament to their
faith in anarchism. Two prime examples of these hallowed yet
hollow causes are 'Western culture' and Mumia.
Long a favorite punching bag for
Marxists and their Anarchist dupes alike, "Western culture" has
that quality of being sufficiently vague yet redolent of evil
inequity that always pushes the red rebellion button while
bypassing the brain entirely. If they just substituted
'Hollywood' or 'American' for 'Western' thus sufficiently
delineating the important differences between the two it would
certainly simplify the debate. Nonetheless, whatever it's
called, there's no denying this culture is quite popular. So
think about it, if this culture is so thoroughly despicable, why
does the world gobble it up and want more? It's obviously
providing them with something they think they need or they
wouldn't keep coming back for a super-sized second helping.
By attacking only the superficial elements anarchists gain
nothing but a harmless contrarian appeal that remains impotent
to rectify the underlying root problems.
Western Culture is not the problem,
it's produced heroes and zeros yes, great and small alike over
thousands of years true, but to condemn it in toto is a
ridiculous assault. So let's put
the blame where it belongs: on the aberrant Hollywood culture
which has not been around for thousands of years but merely a
few decades. And after all, anarchism itself is a product of
Western civilization! Maybe Anarchists should declare war on
themselves?
Favorite bumper sticker opinion and
Hollywood-approved cause, freeing the imprisoned Mumia Abu-Jamal
saturates anarchist discussions. Free Mumia? While ignoring the
thousands of other wrongly accused and wrongly imprisoned
persons out there? But why? What for? What difference would it
make? Freeing Mumia is like giving a Band-Aid to a cancer
patient. What a waste and such a typical pointless diversion
from what matters! Sadly,
today's anarchism is just a Trojan Horse that hijacks youthful
aggression and understandable anger so as to rail against safe
causes and aimless convictions.
We all dislike abusive authority,
wage slavery, the excess's of capitalism, and the mind control of
Hollywood, but anarchism has never solved any of those problems
even though it has had plenty of opportunities in its 200 or so
years of history. The failure of anarchism is a direct product
of the inherent flaws within its very own fictional beliefs,
especially the anarchist concept of authority, after all -
the leaderless group is most influenced by its worst elements.
The spirit is willing but the
flesh is weak
The people that become anarchists
have energy, activist efficacy and intelligence, all highly
commendable. But if it's wasted on the trivial and
counterproductive it's not admirable, it's worse than doing
nothing because it's just making the world worse while setting
the stage for the victory of the despotic authorities they claim
to oppose!
Some of the things that today's
anarchists claim to stand against:
-
Authority
-
Intolerance
-
Bigotry
-
"Homophobia"
-
Racism
-
Hate
-
Violence, etc.
Why not just drop
the phony pretext and join a church? You'd get the same message
and the people would be friendlier! Yeah, and it turns out Jesus
wasn't just a hippy he was an anarchist too.
If anyone wants to be an anarchist,
a nihilist won't be standing in their way, but they will be
there to point out their mountains of fallacies and delusions. I
think it wise anarchists demand more of their ideological
representation than just fashionable platitudes and childish
rebellion. Nihilists destroy what needs to be destroyed, the
structures, people, and beliefs that obstruct freedom, nihilism
and well-being; we'll burn it all down, dead to the root. And to
do that nihilists use that which is observable, consistent and
verifiable, not simply what one wants to see or believe in. For
example, every individual is egotistically motivated be it
rational independent behavior or mass psychology - the dynamics
are different but the self-interest is a constant, revolution is
just a variable. This does not suggest a complete rejection of
revolution here, now or anywhere, but any belief in the ultimate
justice or righteousness of any revolution is a very dangerous
thing, just as all faith is. We will have a revolution but it
will be one based upon reason, planning, and cold-analysis of
the situation.
We'll have a revolution but not just another fake effort to
empower dictators and bankers, one that doesn't just scorch the
superstructure but one that burns the very root of belief, the source of all
evil.
Revolution is tougher than you
think
But more important than even that
pragmatic assessment is the actual mechanics of a real
revolution. Do the "revolutionaries" realize what they are up
against? It's easy to toss a rock through a Starbucks window,
but how many of those hotheads have ever fired a rifle?
 The
revolution won't be fun for long when you've got police SWAT
teams (or worse) barking down your snorkel. Is my point fairly
clear? Who will really be by your side when the rubber
hits the road? Study your history - anarchists are just the dupes
who helped put the Communists into power in Russia and elsewhere
and nearly in Germany.
Do you want to play games and get
arrested or do you want to pragmatically asses your capabilities
and work within those boundaries? Are we in it for the ephemeral
action or the strategic solution? If you really what to take
down the system you've got to know how to do it right and in
order to do it right, you've got to know what you're up against
and the realities of the situation. Whenever anarchism and
authority meet, authority always wins because authority is
organized, disciplined and focused while anarchism is not and
cannot be without violating its own manufactured values. This is
the foolishness of being guided by fantasy instead of fact and
by transient morality instead of reality; a Nihilist may be
cynical but at least they're under no such delusions or
limitations.
The same outcome as traditional
revolution can be achieved through other means; it's crucial to
realize that violent revolution is a means to an end, not a
cause in itself.
 It's
also important to fit your environment, one because you blend in
and don't get picked out for persecution and two because you can
often get much, much further by cooperation and legality than
mindless rebellion. Anarchist are very useful, I'm not standing
in their way. But it is really irrelevant whether they have a
name, a costume or any boilerplate self-righteous jargon backing
them up. It's what they do that matters - they keep authorities
occupied with minor threats.
So am I saying that Nihilism is the
ultimate answer, the panacea for all our ills? Perhaps not,
but it's a start, and why believe in something that isn't true?
Why continue to stick with a losing team? Why continue to beat
your head against a brick wall of pointless causes only becoming
a nuisance to authorities rather than a viable threat? Negate
your faith, don't believe in anarchism. If it doesn't provide
you with a real, substantive benefit then dump it. If you get
something out of it then go for it but don't lie to yourself
that it will save the world or solve the problems of authority
or that your fellow anarchist will really be there to bail you
out when the serious heat is on!
Anarchists are always most
prevalent when police forces are at their weakest and lawyers
are at their strongest.
Anarchists are to Capitalism what
Satanists are to Christianity - contrarians. Take away their
countervailing opposition and both cease to exist. Nihilism
isn't a contrarian effort against whatever the latest outrage
is, be it abusive cops or a locked up celebrity. Nihilism would
be fundamentally the same whether it was in Communist China,
free America or the Garden of Eden. Nihilism would have
different priorities in each situation but the concepts would
remain unchanged, such as the skepticism of popular assumptions.
Nihilism is something anyone can do, you don't have to look a
certain way or associate with certain people because it's deeper
than that, it's an attitude, an awareness and a world-view.
Nihilism is home, work or play. Rejection of faith, idealism,
philosophy, theology and teleology; while building from the
simple, the observable, the verifiable. Nihilism is the
vaccine against BS - whenever, wherever and whatever it is, and
the best anyone has to date. 24.09.02
 |
 |
1.
One detail in the Enron documentary that needs to
be explained: Jeffrey Skilling is reputed to have used Richard
Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene as the visionary
motivation for his Enron machinations, in other words as a
mistaken justification for financially raping the country like
the class act businessman he is. The title of Dawkin’s book
actually refers to the nature of the genes being selfish in
their singular desire to reproduce, not genes that makes
selfish people more successful! This is obvious to anyone who
has read the book and not just the cover like the dipshit
scumbag Jeffrey Skilling but nonetheless it needs to be
clarified lest the misunderstanding perpetuate.
2.
For a remarkable look at the genetic history of
European explorers, and the story of the Y-chromosome's decay, read Adam's Curse, by Bryan
Sykes, 2004.
|
