Did we ask to be saved?

A comment on my own work: An application of the more-nihilistic-than-usual stance I've recently adopted to the political realm and the political ideal universally found in this age. This is not intended to encourage any sort of inertia, which seems to be what ANUS has been attacking most fervently as of late. In fact, the mentality behind such inertia is a specific form of messianism: "don't do that, it doesn't make sense. Listen to my warnings! I'm trying to help you, idiot." Given that messianism is very passive-aggressive, it, too, is a form of inertia. What best unifies the two stances, however is a fear of self-confrontation.

Ideals are great, we could not operate without them--and so long as we can recognize that they are only relatively significant and absolutely worthless, so long as we can confront ourselves and our own ideals, we should retain them as much as possible. I have found that in the face of ennui, I can do nothing but hold ideals; my nihilism demands no less...

We were young and impressionable, a nation raised on Superman and Jesus--was it any wonder we grew up to think it our responsibility to save the world?

All that is born will someday die; life is a great passing-away of possibilities. Where a man may have strength, with men one finds only weakness. A man of exception may realize an ideal, but men lack the potential for such a realization, and, through misinterpretation and corruption of the ideal, bring about a 'passing-away.' In Anno Domini 2005, we Christians -- and make no mistake, regardless of what one may believe to be one's confession, every person touched by the West has been baptized in Christ's name...-- have exhausted all possibilities of Western-Christian idealism but one, and we Americans, inheritors of Western culture, have thus set this final ideal of world-wide salvation as our aim. This 'Americanism,' this messianism, is the consummation of Western decadence. Humanism presents itself as the Christianity of the modern world, the faith to which mankind adheres fanatically, its method of conversion: promises of Heaven on earth in the form of individual rights.

Individualism, which began to make some noise in the West during the Renaissance, reaching a deafening decibel-level during the 'Enlightenment,' and which still continues to increase in volume, has crescendo-ed to such a great intensity that it has come to shatter man. Communities and societies no longer exist, save as broken ideas; in their place, we are left with 'communities of individuals,' conceived of as atomistic groups who bond together for mutual economic benefit or security, a whole that is naught but a 'sum of parts;' parts often working for themselves rather than the whole. The ideology of individualism is, too, fractured into two groups: the de jure individualists, who usually identify themselves as defenders of the individual, and the de facto individualists, who are known as 'collectivists.' The apparent dichotomy between what is colloquially referred to as 'individualism' and 'collectivism' is rendered untenable immediately upon realizing that this so-called 'collectivism' is the ideology of 'communities of individuals,' in which each member works to serve his own individualistic ends. And, as 'collectivism' has been shown to be inherently individualistic, 'individualism' may be understood as collectivistic: if every individual has more-or-less equal individual worth (on a functional level, at least), every individual has some great 'right' to their opinion, and a sociological observation of 'herd-mentality' reveals that when kratos is given to the demos, no matter how individualistic the people may be, the 'majority rules.' With this understanding, we may see the Cold War in a new light: it was not the battle between the individualistic American capitalist pigs and the damn Commie collectivists, but an ideal testing itself against a mutation of itself, a quasi-Darwinistic struggle to see which individualism was 'most fit:' the consummation of a Western ideal.

This individualist/collectivist pseudo-dichotomy is not limited to damn commies and capitalist pigs; another common example is found between evil racists, the 'White Power!' and 'Black Power!' hate cults, and flowery politically correct egalitarians. 'Power!' groups are selective collectivists, comprised of members grouping together behind a politically-created racial idea as individuals seeking to protect themselves (or their politically-created idols) from a perceived threat (ordinarily that of another race). While these evil racist groups perceive some other race as their enemy, their actual opponent is egalitarianism and its brotherly-loving embrace. Egalitarianism is a very interesting case from the perspective I adopt, given that it is the best demonstration of the true unity of collectivism and individualism. The anti-hate, love-monger promotes, on a superficial level, pure individualism. "We are all human, and as humans we all have rights to individual liberties." But wait! You haven't heard the egalitarian's full speech! 'We are all human, and should be treated the same based on this singular trait. We're human, and to conceive of a human as this or that promotes hate; no distinction is allowed!" A totalitarianism of lovean exaggeration? When it comes down to it, what ensures these individual human rights, but this imaginative figment of 'humanity?' Ultimately, egalitarianism is a fear of distinction, or a view that at the very least places a person's 'humanity' above all differences, effectively ignoring these differences. On the egalitarian level, you're a 'beautiful and unique snowflake,' just like everyone else...

Hark! I hear voices in the wind. The old dispute still echoes. An individualist shouts, "All opinions matter!" A collectivist shouts, "The opinion of all matters!" And I ask myself, "Whence comes this mattering?"

--Imperativism, which seeks to claim that views from this or that individualistic perspective matter, but ultimately fails to do so because the imperativist only justifies the significance of action from the mattering implicit in the individualistic stance, and thus fails to grant any real significance to messianism whatsoever. "There is a great threat to capitalistic freedom, or the proletariat, or our race, or human rights! This calls for measures as drastic as my imperativist mind can concoct! What I say matters much; if you don't heed my words, our ideals will perish! And if you disagree, well, you're a threat, too!" Oh dear, oh dear, I better listen up. This guy can shout apocalyptic words. We're all gonna die, man! To arms, to arms!

Imperativism (you guessed it) looks at the world from a single-minded viewpoint and creates imperatives to incite people, rally them, and get them to work toward whatever one says is necessary to work towards. For the imperativist, the world is in black-and-white: he must break down ideas, peoples, and movements into binary and rigid absolutes. "This thing is good, that is bad. If you agree with me, you're good; if you don't, you're bad." Thus the capitalist screamed, "The commies are coming!" and blacklisted anyone who thought anything the damn commies did could possibly be good. Thus the commie called for revolution against bourgeois exploitation and, in the Soviet Union, sent everyone who doubted communism to the Gulag. Racists declare that their race is threatened and some Hitler decides that now is a good time to get rid of 'life unworthy of life' within the Fatherland, and some black dude gets on CSPAN and calls for the extinction of all white people. Alarmed by such a threat to human brotherhood, the egalitarian tries to push for some anti-hate (and anti-first-amendment...) legislation. "It's imperative that we do these things, everyone! If you disagree, you're a commie, bourgeois, a race-traitor, or a racist!" What a wonderful tool, this imperativism, the would-be messiah has created: it allows him to delude people into agreement with sensationalism, keeping people from realizing that messianism lacks any real grounding by shouting nonsense, drowning out the silence, the nothingness, of his salvation with the noise of imperatives.

Perhaps the motivation of most messianism is now apparent: spite. Whether he opposes communism or some other race and seeks to destroy his enemies with imperativism, or creates some sort of universal with which he aims to change the bourgeoisie he opposes, the messianist frequently acts out of ressentiment, shrouded by a veil of altruism. "I love capitalism, communism, my race, and humanity. That I get aroused by fantasies of attaining victory over my enemies is beside the point! Don't question my love!" But there is something sinister, a shrill noise, hidden behind your lovely melodies; a booming whisper sings to me the lyrics of your song: "This love is a hate..."

And what is this hate? Let us differentiate: some apparent hatred is a contrived righteousness in the face of 'so much persecution,' a hatred which looks-down-upon, while other hate is more 'pure' and legitimately hateful. This latter type of hate is motivated by irony? Who is it that the spiteful messiah loathes so greatly? Why is it that he feels such an intense anger? What is the origin of this hatred? Insecurity? Shame? How many capitalists rail against communism because they see, on some level, the similarities between these two ideologies, and understand that communism is perhaps the best economic strategy of the lower-class, the tool the poor use to 'capitalize'? How many communists recognize their own bourgeois condition and project self-hate upon others? How many fad commies can you find within the complacent middle-class? How many 'Black Power' advocates are shamed by their own 'Westoxication'? How many 'White Nationalists,' when contemplating the extermination of 'niggers' and 'kikes,' hate these races for the same brutality, inhumanity, and insidiousness present in their own attitudes? How many egalitarians fight for rights and equality because they feel guilty to have laughed at that racist joke, or because they once thought an evil racist thought? Have they fought so many monsters that they themselves have become monsters, --or did they battle monsters because they themselves were already monsters? This hatred is the consequence of an ignorance or cowardice, an inability to wage Jihad against oneself, and the projection of this self-hate upon the world under the pretense of messianic salvation.

But what of the other type of hate, this 'righteousness,' the messianist's method of self-vindication: martyrdom? Through a feeling of persecution, brought about by his own self-marginalization, the messianist thinks his view is justified. "Our way of life is threatened, and for defending it "O, how I have suffered!" All an excuse for the failure of one's own ideology and the failure of one's own life. 'Do you see how much I lost, how much I have suffered for my ideals?' is a nice way to hide the reality of one's inability to gain. The inept love their messiah-fantasies that there are so many would-be messiahs in our time says much about this society! And these failures turn their weaknesses into covenants, hiding from the reality of the things that shamed them by exalting such things as the marks of the 'chosen.'

Motivated by a denial of our weaknesses, a self-indulgent self-loathing we want to project, to inflict, upon the world, we all strive to be a Superman, a modern messiah, a bastardized Christ. But this yearning, I tell you, is the death-throe of an old God. Messianism permeates this society, America-world-wide, which is evidence that this society as a whole might needs to be saved but, O Great Irony, any messiah would further harm a messianist society, as he would be himself saturated with messianism. One does not ingest more poison to rid themselves of a poison. So, what to do, what to do? How can it be fixed? Ah, that is the wrong attitude! A man may have strength, but men only weakness, and to these men, to this society, I offer no deliverance, no great revolution, no final solution. Behold: the farce we call reality. Can you withstand this revelation? Or will you seek salvation?

November 23, 2005