King Midas’ ears

What life has worth? The living just
The children of the soot and earth.
Dry mouth of dread, say: is life-lust
Naught but the rarest of the dead?

Shayne

Alien Heredity

The other day I was discussing evolution with some coworkers. One woman made the remark that she refused to believe she came from a monkey. Later on, when the two of us were alone in the lunch room, I asked her if she really thought that no people evolved from monkeys. She said: “Well… maybe some black people.” I chuckled to myself. She responded, “No, I’m serious.” So I asked her where she thought she came from. Her reply was that, presumably, white people (or at least non-blacks) are the product of extraterrestrial or angelic miscegenation. Very Lovecraftian, unbeknownst to her of course.

My point here isn’t about subversive racism or any other nonsense, as this lady is, per my observation, perfectly tolerant and accommodating to all peoples, but that there is a whole other discussion about race going on that the media is completely ignorant about. These personal beliefs seem not to reflect the popular PC, scientific or religious ideals discussed in mass media but more personal superstitions which harken back to ancient times. These ideas are stifled by the prevailing structure of taboos, which threaten the financial wellbeing of anyone with an opinion differing from the status quo. This is sad because such ideas serve for much more interesting conversation.

Shayne

Arthur Rackham

He never lost the joy and sense of wonderment and he never gave in to the baser styles that fell in and out of favor over the years. From Queen Victoria's death in 1901 to the start of World War I, Rackham's illustrations preserved a lifestyle and a sensibility that kept the frighteningly modern future at bay. His beautiful drawings were the antithesis of the industrial advances that allowed them to be printed at affordable prices. Even into the twenties and thirties, his art was a constant reminder of those aspects of innocence that had been left behind.

[link]

The illustrations of Arthur Rackham are at once enchanting, inspiring, melancholy, and for me personally, somewhat saddening. His work is amazing, rich, deep, technical, sporadic, and emotional… as a striving illustrator myself, how can I communicate such essence similarly? Surly, it is a different time: one could once get a fine education in the arts; to learn traditional techniques and methods to then adapt to the world of the day. This is no longer so. Speak to most any artist of classical worth and they will tell of struggles against their education; success in spite of it. Where dose one go to follow in the footsteps of a master?



Extensive Rackham Gallery

Shayne

The Road to Utnapishtim

I stand on the bright white shores indignantly;
Brave Shamash climbs the skies and soars above me.
Remnants shimmer and shower down in his wake
And I am warmed by them despite my mistakes.
On this beach I look out deep and swallow breath;
Stretching on forever: the Watters of Death.
The beach goddess tells me humans cannot cross;
But He Who Saw Life I must seek -- to emboss
My own life which, absent ornamentation,
Stinks of foul death with no remuneration.
And Death sneers and laughs that I’m ephemeral:
He says I’m best fulfilled as nothing at all.
Where’s the ferryman, where’s my Urshanabi,
To take me from here to where I want to be?
I wander through the woods and search forever,
But this boatman is elusive and cleaver.
My eyes and hands and ears and nose and taste buds --
Inadequate! Come, O modus vivendi!
Now I see the ferry driver in my blood;
As a völk I transcend: immortality!

Shayne

The View on Sexual Identity

Four out of five hosts of The View (surprise, surprise!) think gender roles are arbitrary. Typical liberal reduction tactics are used: “Boys play with dolls; they’re just called action figures.” And of course, as is normal in this sort of media, the innate confusion of multiculturalism is thrown into the mix, erecting a disorientating straw man: “What about kilts? A kilt is a skirt!”

The fact is that boys and girls, men and women are different, innately and developmentally, biologically and socially. They have different natural impulses from infancy to adulthood and specific traditional cultural roles that result in a stable family life and thus a more stable community writ large. It is the modern illusory world view that makes people think they can be or do whatever they feel like, and everything will be ok.

But as far as what’s actually happening, the dissolution of natural sex roles is wreaking havoc on us. Divorce is rampant, and those who do remain together are increasingly economically pressured to both work jobs, leaving children neglected or raised by foreign nannies; subsequently, depression, despair, reactionary violence, medically diagnosable stress problems and suicide increase among the confused youth.

The abandonment of civilized structure that the majority of these women propone is a blasphemy against reality and a symbol of collapse. Western adult fetishism of individualism leaves children adrift in a sea of choices that they are not yet developed enough to process; they have no basis from which to valuate anything, and not just the hosts of The View but the most vocal and belligerent of the population (bourgeoisie and proletariat alike) want this quality for all. This insanity is becoming normal...

Shayne

Fatalism and Amor Fati

The notion of destiny has always fascinated me. I have gone back and forth on the potential existence of free will. Obviously, it’s not an empirically soluble question; but the experience of living has led me to more deterministic proclivities. Upon closer reflection, the problem with this outlook becomes apparent: if the future is ineluctable, and what we call “will” is simply one of many perceived illusory states of inevitably formulated causality, then what purpose is there in life or consciousness?

This ultimatum seems foisted upon all at some point or another and all seekers must inevitably face it. It happens to many youngsters in their development of adulthood. They look around themselves and don’t see any meaning in any of it; they ask their parents and teachers and get inadequate shit answers.

Some might accept these answers, at least to some extent, and suppress the gnawing curiosity. Such people, further down the road in their lives, end up having what’s commonly called a “mid-life-crisis.” The point being one must face this quandary sooner or later.

Many reject the answers from their elders, recognizing the oppressive despise they receive from those who’ve spent half a lifetime trying to berry the question only to have it prosaically thrown back in their face by the next generation. These youngsters, unable to ignore the apparently persistent nothingness, are vulnerable to fatalism, or the doctrine that events or actions are subjugated to inevitable predetermined fate.

Fatalists are inherently negative, as their resignation of choice or will stifles their creative self-expression, the very existential meaning of life. They have succumbed to the Taunt of Silenus; they wish they were never introduced to this prison of illusion, but since they are already here, their best option is to die soon. The milieu of increasingly disconnected ethno-culture also plays a large factor in robbing the youth of a solid foundation to rely on in these troubled psychological times. This is why suicide, depression, substance abuse, etc. are happening more and more. And yet, despite all the negativity, fatalism holds tight a certain kind of undeniable truth about reality, which makes it extremely compelling.

However, Nietzsche offers an alternative view. Amor fati is Latin for “love of fate” or “love of one’s fate.” In The Gay Science, it is spoken of thusly:

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

This weltanschauung is not fundamentally different from fatalism except that it seeks to perceive what is as what is good; that destiny is ultimately beautiful, and thus our bondage to determinism is destiny’s way of reaching it’s ultimate purpose, so our lives are ultimately beautiful too. In that sense amor fati is diametrically opposed to fatalism in action: whereas fatalism is an existential resignation, a giving up, amor fati is an acceptance and reverence for fate as a cosmic ideal, and a striving to its highest cognizance. It is an extremely positive and logical way to live and any who struggle with fatalism should be introduced to this attitude so it can be overcome, transcended.

May all my völk love the amor fati and fulfill their destiny in this life: may we empower ourselves and build the bridge to the Übermensch!

Shayne

Existentialism and Art as the Meaning of Life

In his book The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche tells a story about king Midas, who:

hunted a long time in the woods for the wise Silenus, companion of Dionysus, without being able to catch him. When he finally caught him the king asked him what he considered man’s greatest good. The daemon remained sullen and uncommunicative until finally, forced by the king, he broke into a shrill laugh and spoke: “Ephemeral wretch, begotten by accident and toil, why do you force me to tell you what it would be to your greatest boon not to hear? What would be best for you is quite beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best is to die soon.”

The moral of this story, for Nietzsche, is existential in nature. When one holds the perspective that beings create the meaning and essence of their own lives in their minds, Silenus’ taunt is only threatening to the degree to which one denies the sacred and temporally valuates their existence. Or rather, Selenus is correct if meaning is innately objective—he’s correct unless we do something to prove him wrong.

Absent idealism, the existential life careens into fatalism. If the world is “finished,” in an objective sense, then we are doomed as beings of accidental, ephemeral meaninglessness, our only options being that of denial of reality or suffering under the oppression of inevitable damnation, in which case Silenus’ strident advice is advantageous. However, if, as Arturo Fallico suggests, the state of the world is “not-done-and-having-to-be-attended-to,” then idealism, the manifestation of transcending phenomena, is not only our most beneficial option but our duty as conscious beings. We are behooved to disprove the proverbial Selenus.

From an existentialist perspective it is better to have meaning and fulfillment in life than disenchantment and psychological vacancy, so idealism makes the most sense, even if the transcendental process is endless, because the ideological application itself fills the attendant world-void. The method for this can be called creative self-expression. When one uses their will to evolve a unique esoteric self-essence, as opposed to being wholly deterministic, and expresses that to the exoteric world, they are exercising their will to power to create an aesthetic that previously didn’t exist. Thus, their existence means something because it attended to the unfinished world.

It’s interesting to note that the reason the world needs persistent attendance is because it—and subsequently our—transient condition cannot absolutely validate any one change enough to consider the whole “finished.” In the context of consciousness there is always individual and group subjectivity, and as for the whole, which simply is, our moral valuations only apply to our relationship with reality and not reality itself. We mustn’t assume, to borrow Sartre, that what we think is the object of the external world is actually the being-in-itself. Thus change must be a constant.

As stated before, how one adds to this absurd condition is via creative expression of the self. There is potential paradox here, however, because we must consider how separated we are from our experiences; how determined by our environment is our “self”? If the essence we consider to be “us” is contingent upon what happens to us, then our being is made up of innumerable constituents and is inherently deterministic. No “self” is truly autonomous. But I would argue that this is not a paradox because true autonomy is not necessary to contribute to the unfinished world. In fact I would argue that the acceptance and integration of those constituents makes ones creativity more authentic.

Art imitates life imitates art. It is similar for being: self begets world begets self; one is created by the world but is also actively creating the world, simply by being there. From here the question becomes qualitative: what worth is your contribution? Surly, one is creating the world around them simply by being, but some create more than others, and all creation is different, thus a system of values must be put into place to judge the worth of the creations of the individual. A healthy ethno-culture provides such a system.

Ethnicities carry the particularity of the environment which evolved them. A traditional, homogeneous ethnicity is subsequently connected to the land, and its culture reflects that. A proper connection to reality (nature) sparks a healthy ethos, which in turn allows the people to express their characteristically prevailing attitudinal beliefs symbolically. This mythos is the highest form of art imaginable as it reflects both the world as is and the collective wisdom of tradition and heredity. It is also the most empowering kind of expression because it substantiates the fundamental identity of the individual, which opens up the opportunity for greater self definition through the creative arts; if you are constantly trying to define who you are, fundamentally, you sacrifice action, which limits your contribution to the unfinished world.

Thus the most worthy life is spent developing the mythos of one’s people. This is the active process of ethno-culture. It encompasses art, science, architecture, war, etc. so long as the focus is ethnically based (acceptance of reality and reverence for nature). Since this is lacking in the modern West, it is our duty as conscious beings to find similar individuals to ourselves with which to spark an in-group ethos (distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs) to then express mythologically through art. This is the greatest hope for civilization to transcend the absurd. It is a shrill laugh back at Silenus and the existential meaning of life.

Shayne

Pentti Linkola and Democracy

A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life are been organized on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her...Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, similarly only very few are able to solve the matters of the nation and humankind. Only rare people can perceive the connections between matters in the big picture, and to unravel the key questions: what caused each fact and to what will it lead. In this time and this part of the World we are heedlessly hanging on democracy and parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind...In democratic countries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most...Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.

Most people are incapable of understanding the complex mechanisms which manage civilization, yet they are placed in power? What?

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.

Hear hear.

Shayne