Hardship through Time
Some historical periods focus
families, lineages, and particular men in such a way that they feel like
gauntlets of tests. Wars, famines, disease, and other natural disasters can all
act in this way, forcing those of a land through an unwitting test during the
course of time. Some are quick and resolve in a few weeks. In these, maybe a
small area is affected and some portion of them shuffle off, but the wider land
is relatively untouched. Others are wide-reaching and cut deep.
These “tests” of man and his peers stretch through the long fog of the past. Some of the harshest examples from the past 700 years in Europe include the Black Death, the Thirty Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the World Wars. During the course of these events, nations would experience the desolation of the men of a generation; the Black Death in particular recurred over hundreds of years, wiping out innumerable families and people in the process. Those who lived through these times did not conceive them as tests; most likely, they merely kept to their daily affairs and when thoughts turned to such things, they had only bewilderment for their unfortunate turn of events.
Modernity too is a test. The 21st
century, representing what we might call hyper-modernity, is as much a novel or
harsh landscape for man to reckon with as war-torn landscapes or plague-wracked
hamlets. We are so engrossed in everything modern that we fail to reckon with
exactly how radically different life is now from 250 years ago. It bears
mentioning that 1757 was still, according to historians, ‘the modern era.’ The
Renaissance period or the introduction of gun powder, the printing press, and
similar technologies usually mark this current epoch. Yet the movement of
‘urbanization’ ongoing since the Middle Ages had only progressed to the point
where maybe five to ten percent of a given country would have been urban
between 1750 and 1790 (about 5% in 1790 in the US [1]). By 2010, around 80% of
the developed world lives in cities of some size [2]. Village life is largely
gone. In most countries, between two-thirds and half of the workforce remained
in agriculture between 1750 and 1800. Today that number is less than one to two
percent for all developed countries [3].
The differences mount as you
continue through life. Modern war is radically different from ancient warfare.
A modern battlefield is more akin to the most prolonged and intense sieges of
ancient times – only on larger scale and with a great deal of firepower. The
stresses of ancient war were generally shorter and intense, at least for
pitched battles, which for the sake of maneuvering and setup might have taken
weeks, but the battle itself usually lasted hours or a day or two at most.
Beyond the battlefield you were usually relatively safe. In modern war, battles
can easily last weeks or months and everywhere there is a constant low
intensity danger from bombs, indirect fire, snipers, and stragglers (i.e. enemy
soldiers who haven’t been dealt with but now fall ‘behind the frontlines’).
Furthermore, the range is largely beyond the intimate setting we are accustomed
to throughout most of history.
For the past hundred years, most
people have found employment in factories and, increasingly, handling
information or menial services for their fellow man. In hyper-modernity, around
four in five workers are in the services industries [4, 5]. Much of this work
is wholly unlike the things which men used to do. In leisure, too, the
hyper-modern is an alien landscape full of hyper-stimulation. As Roger Scruton
said, in the pre-modern world, listening to music was a deliberate act. In
hyper-modernity, music is omnipresent and inserted in advertising, shopping
centers, and every banal thing one can think of thanks to technology.
Television, mobile phones, and computers have also radically changed how people
spend their free time. Drugs wield a larger influence, prescription and
otherwise, over the lives of millions of people struggling through a very
bizarre reality. Lastly, there is, of course, the decay of all the traditional
institutions of community and faith which neatly packaged meaning for
individuals in the Old World.
There is a very pointed reason to
bring this up. We are not adapted to what I call ‘hyper-modernity.’
Anatomically modern humans have been around for at least two hundred thousand
years and quite likely more. Aside from small and recent adaptations (lactase
persistence, blondism, pathogen resistances, etc.), someone plucked out of a
truly archaic tribe of, say, 50,000 years ago would most likely be able to
function more or less as we do. We have an affinity for the primitive hunter
gatherer life even now. Yet, over the thousands of years since, we have also
found ways to make civilization of a certain limited scale work. Small cities
and hamlet life seem well suited to our likes and faults. We are not adjusted
to mass society, large cities, and the other complexes of hyper-modernity. Unlike
the Neolithic period, it was not a gradual series of improvements and
innovations over a span of hundreds or even thousands of years which led to
drastically different ways of life being adopted slowly. Hyper-modernity has
set upon us within shy of 200 years since the Industrial Revolution. There is
no evidence that most of humanity will ever adapt to this – certainly not
without some further technological aid that does more in adjusting man to
hyper-modernity or correcting the underlying problems than simply adding more
narcotic to numb everyone to the queer woes of today.
We might describe our current situation
as a series of tests which would put unwitting folk and their kin through hell
if they’re not fortunate. One can make passing these tests more likely, and
thus render the survival of self, and of kith and kin more likely at the end –
but the outcome cannot be guaranteed. This is much the same as past events,
only many of the threats are more abstract. Rather than plague or war and the
problems accompanied therewith, we have a host of generally smaller, less
visible, and further off things, yet all of them nonetheless plenty capable of
wiping out men and their family lines. The reach is such that few are untouched
by extension, though some are better stationed and equipped than others to
handle them. The worst of these effects seem to accumulate disproportionately
at the lower end of the socio-economic status ladder. (A crucible would be a
nice metaphor, but (((Arthur Miller))) ruined it.)
The sorts of things we face now are
the specters of nihilism in its dual guises as I wrote about before,
demographic replacement, the death of God and naught to fill his absence but
post-Marxist destroyers, empty corporate hegemons who would ally with the
ideological enemies of the West at its weakest or indeed are its patrons, the
moral and essential decay of men and women, and the corruption of every
institution high and low due to the times. In general, these are the markers of
the Kali Yuga. As I said previously, if you put any stock in cyclical rather
than linear histories, we have all the markers of an age of decline. The chief
problem with our period is a lack of soft landing from ‘managing the decline.’
Worse
still, there aren’t any immediately obvious solutions to most of these
problems. One could offer vague and general solutions which a dictator or
tyrant could impose, but which would be useless to a man or small groups of men
with comparatively little power. Most of the prescriptions which I should lay
out here are probably immediately obvious to anyone who has spent any length of
time on the far right. Nonetheless, it’s worthwhile to put them forth.
Keep
your body as fit and healthy within reason for as long as possible. Get the
tools for defense of self, and then train with them. Keep abreast of local,
national, and international news. Keep a realistic picture of the world about
you – we cannot afford to overestimate our strengths and underestimate the
enemy, especially not when the odds are stacked against us so. Seek someone fit
for starting a family – as long as the proviso that children you raise are
genetically similar to you is assured. Raising mulattoes or half Asians isn’t a
great idea for the children, future generations, or for your own happiness
unless you have no other choice of quality mates. Avoid addictions that do more
harm than good. This is especially true if you have an addictive personality or
family history of substance addiction. Try to live in an area where you are not
surrounded by those who would seek to harm you if at all possible. Living
amongst possible or perceived threats saps the sheen out of life. When
everything permits, join a Männerbund of rightists who are seeking similar
goals.
Here
are some great ways to ‘fail the test’ of modernity on an individual scale: mixed
race children, especially half black children, thus condemning most of your
future progeny to darkness and mediocrity; being childless due to lifestyle
choices; drug addiction, especially to methamphetamine, opiates and opioids,
benzodiazepines, or barbiturates; to substantially lower one’s socioeconomic
status (which will put one’s future kin at greater risk for social dysfunction);
to run into excessive debt, especially for frivolities; to place one’s family
in high risk areas, and places one believes are likely socially and
economically unstable; suicide out of nihilistic despair. I’m sure there are
others, but these are among the worst that come to mind. There are, of course,
ways that societies could ‘fail the test’ as well by allowing mass migration to
the point of ruin, and by continuing the current path of socio-spiritual
disintegration.
To some degree, I’m retreading the
thesis of ‘Ride the Tiger’ and works like it. Anyone who has read through a bit
of Nietzsche and Evola understands well the pitfalls we face alone and as a
folk. The realization of how alien and alienated we are now means that stating
this fact and then acting on it is of
the utmost worth.
Faustian man yearns for problems to
overcome and new heights to surmount. Good thing we seem to have plenty of
those. Among European Faustian man’s biggest challenges in the coming years
shall be the combined tasks of overpowering nihilism and many years of rotten
marketing and programming.
[2]
https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014-Report.pdf (Table II.3, p. 47 in PDF reader or p.
23 in bottom right corner)
[3]
https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture
I
also suggest reading Ricardo Duchesne’s book Uniqueness of Western Civilization. The theses he presents are
somewhat conservatively stated, but well-argued and sourced to boot.
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