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Letters: Nihilism, Metal, and God

And so we climb yet another mountain, fearless of death, meeting the first rays of the sun this beautiful summer morning. Is everything peaceful? No, but we like it that way. Life wasn't meant as a peace treaty; it's war. We're born into this world with the ability of a soldier to conquer new land, and the ability of an artist to shape the world around us. Can we resist participating in the struggle for existence? If we do, we quickly lose sight of our goals and retreat into our Self. We're zen nihilists because we recognize the importance of dissolving the Self and reunite it with the one Brahman.

This is the heroic spirit of ANUS, and after more than 20 years online in various forms, we are still going strong. I hope that you as a reader continue to find new and interesting material to read, and that you feel the spirit of nihilism growing within you. It will make you strong--strong enoguh to resist the Kali Yuga age and embrace a world of shit as an interesting, joyful opportunity to seize the world by its throat and shape it according to your will to power.

Viva la Nihil!

- Alexis

i believe that the christian view on sex, lust and desire has repressed many natural instincts, which during the 60's and 70's were turned on their head and thus gave birth to the hippie liberalism we still see going on today but in a more neurotic and intense form. at the same time it is a reflection of our modern age, where we replace traditional values and ideals with anything that might satisfy the ego. thus people divorce and can't live together, cheat on each other, lie to one another, steal, rape, murder etc. the consequences are direct products of a hollow society without any direction.

i agree with you when you say that there seems to be more to human nature than pure materialist instincts. this is why nietzsche was critical of darwin; it seems like species on earth are not only driven forward by a need to reproduce and survive, but that we have passions and metaphysical desires that are even stronger and mean more to us, than what we at first might think. this is why people who sleep around always feel empty: it's a drug, hiding a deeper dysfunction underneath the purely physical desire.

polygamous relationships have existed throughout time in many different forms. i think it depends much on which ethnic group you refer to and what the cultural tradition is. if you for instance take a look in africa, polygamy is natural. if you travel to norway or sweden, it is for most people an unthinkable thought. history suggests polygamy may have been connected to certain rituals or tribes. also, polygamy linked to sexual liberalism have been a dominant theme in some civilizations at the end of their decline, such as rome.

it's hard to say how future marriages might look like. polygamy makes sense in a purely biological sense, in that people with good genetic quality have the chance to spread their genes into the public genepool of their tribe. at the same time, polygamy only seem to work when it's a firm cultural tradition. some people, for instance the nordics, have a long tradition of a belief in a sacred marriage between one man and one woman. exceptions exist, of course.

thanks for writing in and giving us your support!

cornelius tacitus' "germania" is pretty reliable and a vital read to understand the germanic pagan culture. for beliefs, i've read mostly swedish literature, but h r ellis davidson has written some good stuff on nordic myths; accessible but penetrating. of course, the number one source is to check out is the eddas (both poetic and prosaic) and any books containing icelandic viking myths: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ice/index.htm

for studies of celtic myths, check out this page: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm

essential schulze: "moondawn" and "x"

further studies: "dreams," "in blue," "mirage," "irrlicht," "cyborg," "timewind"

dear beth,

you're not respecting my freedom to be who i am, which is someone who thinks people whose only goal in life is to want "freedom to be who they are" are empty minds worthy of mockery.

chuck, between taking credit for inventions he didn't make, using the ideas of better musicians, whining about how the world misunderstood him, sodomizing young boys and getting AIDS and dying, was one of those people who considers himself profound because he has found a theory that sounds "ultimate." yes, let's all be who we are, even polysexual pedophiliac coprophages like chuck schuldiner.

you don't understand that your beliefs are paradoxical, and are responsible for all of the bad in this world. we do, and that's why we oppose the maudline cult of chuck worship.

good luck

- goat

i agree that what he did was not the optimal solution in any case and that this will be food for the commercial papers out there.

what we see in this killer was a bright young man who'd seen through our decaying society and felt that he had to act. from here on, people like you will be quick to condemn what he did on a consequentialist basis. it's easy to sit now and say "you could have done this and that better, what a failure." keep in mind though that these are the same people that Pekka-Eric refers to in his - i agree - fragmented but insightful "manifesto:" we let our moral systems construct a false fantasy world in which death and suffering have no place. this is a systematic denial of reality.

hence we come to the core of why we wrote this article: this act is not as much an heroic act in itself, as the motivations behind it are understood as idealistic/heroic. he correctly assessed this modern world as insane and couldn't take it any longer. most of us would act differently, which we are, but we are not pretentious enough to condemn him for what he did. i'm sure we'd condemn nietzsche in his time for lashing out at christianity but seeing what it's done to europe, we understand completely how he felt.

in short, it's laughable to be moralistic about something that clearly demonstrates the false intentions behind morality. social darwinism or not, more people like Pekka-Eric will continue to harass this society to force us to see ourselves and our actions in a new light. those people might not be "heroes" like you see on American TV, but they are heroic in that they choose to stand up for something they believe in, regardless of mortal outcome.

related: http://www.corrupt.org/articles/politics/alex_birch/tropa_de_elite

you're a typical leftist, in that you first condemn us morally for showing support/sympathy for someone that saw ideals and goals as higher than personal death, then you passive-aggressively insert the following: "If someone wants to listen to you or read your texts, I'm prepared to pay his/her medicine..."

you're aggressive, scared and full of hate. people like you will lash out at anyone who's not motivated by fear, which ironcially proves both Nietzsche and Pekka-Eric right: fear of death => fear of life.

thanks for writing in. as long as we can communicate, there's no worries on the language issues; as long as we have something to say, who cares if it's intellectual or not?

a nation is a people in a local area unified by heritage, culture, values in consensus and language.

a nation-state is a political substitute for a nation. australia, brokeback island and the united states are the most prominent of these.

i am not concerned with some religious stopping of the melting pot. as someone who lives in a nation-state (texas) occupied by the USA, i would like to see the USA turn to a nationalist direction, because it makes this country the nicest and most ambitious place it is going to be.

i am also not interested in stopping people from eating feces, stuffing dynamite into their rectums and lighting it, and so on. i know what is the right choice for my people, and i want to pursue it so we do not join those who are going to fail.

i have no use for it. i would not allow it. i do not need to, like a callow feminist, claim it causes rape; it encourages a negative view of women. i do not like porn. i am not against photos of naked women and men, and i think it is good to have naked statues in public, as well as public displays of affection by some of our teenage and young 20s members of society, because we must never wander far from recognizing life for what it is.

i agree. thomas chittum covered this in one of his books, but it's likely the nation-state will break up into special interest groups, and the successful ones will be ethnic states united by extreme nationalism and ideology -- judaism, and zionism, are good examples that others will follow.

USA was founded by celts and germanics, and before that, was a place that other tribes wandered through. the most excellent outcome would be to have the USA be a germanic nation or series of nations, and to deport everyone else.

it's close to reality for most people.

laibach, seems interesting; NSK, i know little.

yes, or europe will self-destruct into a third world failure.

how big is this area? if there are some areas that want to be multicultural, they can be, but they should not be surprised if others eliminate them because they are a threat. best place to be multicultural is in the trading cities of the middle east.

hope this answered your questions and was good reading.

- goat

thank you so much for your support -- we're happy you like the site!

1. summary: nature is beautiful and offer us unlimited knowledge of the world in which we live. it's worth preserving and therefore we are pro-green

2. natural selection is real, evolution is real

3. some are, others aren't. i can only speak for myself and i am neo-pagan in the sense that that i believe the nordic gods serve as eternal archetypes for how the nordic people should live. other people will find a lot of knowledge in their pagan legacy. i don't condemn christianity fully but think it's an insane religion that have caused a multitude of problems. one can re-interpret it but going back to old testament: superficial morality

keep reading the ANUS to find out more about our views on these topics!

i see him as important because he saw first and foremost that something must be done. sure death awaits if we do not change course, so it's hard to argue that he even killed anyone, if you take a broader perspective.

yes, what he did was not perfect, but it was better than watching TV or typing on the internet and doing nothing. most people who write in with critique end up letting their own criticism of themselves keep them from doing anything; and what is that, but worthless?

very little is perfect in life, except perhaps the music of ildjarn. we celebrate him not for overcoming humanism, but for shattering illusion, and for showing people a glimpse of the reality they'd rather deny, an illusion that will kill us all and replace our beautiful planet with a concrete ruin.

- goat

existentialism is a method for assessing the individual's choices and how it defines what they are likely to choose, including the possibility of no-choice (biological or historical determinism). in a time when few choices exist, existence still precedes essence, meaning that while humans do not have "free will" they do have "choice." in a time that is broken, what defines us as individuals is how we respond to the two basic choices: go with the flow even though it's doom for overall history even if we can skate by with an easy life, or resistance, in many forms. a librarian who teaches good books is as much a resistance fighter as an ecofascist blowing up SUVs, although the latter may be more immediately effective.

smart, honest, motivated people well educated in the arts, and the methods of art, whether by themselves or by others

i think ultimately this question comes down to the band themselves: if they are willing to stick to their guns and make the art they believe in, they will find a way to distribute it. it's possible to do it through a record company, and also to do it via self-publishing, although it's harder to get publicity.

i appreciate such thoughtful questions

- goat

i'm pretty sure that's a copyright violation of lyrics to a hip hop song.

criminal nigga'!

thanks for writing in. if my answers are better, will you change your behavior?

matter is information. the universe originated in itself from an awareness of its own absence.

space is a material distinction; without matter, it would be impossible to posit "space." if you believe God created the first matter, what created God?

christianity is not the only religion. i suggest advaita vedanta or european paganism, both of which are older and more successful than christianity. if you are a christian, i suggest the transcendental writers johannes eckhart and ralph waldo emerson.

- goat

we've been doing this for over 15 years, you don't think we've paid attention to what our name is?

to understand why we named it ANUS, please read this article: http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/anus/

happy fecal week!

Dear Mrs Karolina Sor,

We would love to help you. We have buckets of money we don't know how to spend since we retired.

However, we are now having doubts about Jesus Christ and the Lord's Path on Earth. It seems that God wants us to look at the celestial, and treat everyone as equal, but this seems to only empower those who are not equal. It seems God wants us to treat all life as holy, but this only empowers the life that does unholy things. It seems God wants us to eschew money, but since our society is run on money, this means only the un-Godly run our society. Is God Satan? Because it seems that everything He does is a giant contradiction bound to bring about the worst in humanity, as if Christianity was a self-fulfilling negative prophecy.

My husband and I are about to give all of our retirement money to a Satanic organization, The Altar of Unholy Blasphemy. We've put up a web page for them at http://www.anus.com/altar. My husband worked for many years with his artificial horse insemination business, and he made over 10 million dollars we have in the bank, almost all of which is going to go to Satan.

Unless someone can help. Tell us of your faith in Jesus Christ.

Sincerely,

Edith and Prozak Anus

you are passively hostile and hypocritical, good work.

we appreciate the jokela shootings because it forces people like you to realize life is not all about "livin' and lovin'" in our mad society. you and all other parasites feel emotionally offended by this and we're glad you do, because it might make you see truth one day.

if not, who cares about a dead moron?

http://medical.merriam-webster.com/medical/anus

Inflected Form(s): plural anus·es or ani

BONUS:

http://medical.merriam-webster.com/medical/rectum

Inflected Form(s): plural rectums or rec·ta

- olli

basically i agree with what you're saying; modern people hover between being religious fanatics and fatalistic fools. we need to find a clear path that avoids the pitfalls of both of these ways of life and in our opinion, nihilism is a perfect mental tool for such a journey.

drugs: in general they stink. some people use them wisely for higher purposes but for most it's an escape from reality. you do well without them.

sex: anything without context becomes meaningless. having sex with a person you don't love is like trying to write a brilliant novel in a space vacuum; the words will relate to nothing.

hessians: i've personally never been a hessian in a socio-cultural sense and have only met very few intelligent people that have been into metal at all. i agree though; it's become a trend like anything else and a terrible one at that. most hessians probably become classical-fans by their mid-20s, having realized the connection between bathory and wagner.

you're on the right path and we need people like you to fight these ideals in every day life. no more couch sitting - get out there and LIVE nihilism, because no one else will do it for you.

we removed the entry from the front page after a few days; it's not really something you'll understand unless you place it in its proper context, thus might not be food for new visitors. jenkem as a phenomenon is insane, gross and stupid - so stupid that it becomes hilarious. when humanity is getting high on its own feces, we know for sure that the end is near.

however, as nihilists we choose not to despair and that is why we try to turn jenkem into something funny. some people have emailed in and said they feel offended by our jenkem page. our response is this: we're glad you're offended because it means we're not alone in thinking this world has gone mad.

many of our readers have gone through the same process as you do and finally chosen to become nihilists, attempting to see the world in its clear, naked form. this is indeed a process because we're brainwashed from day one to become conformistic robots without any independent opinion. we're daily exposed to tv, ads, social pressure and popularity. nihilism enables us to see through all of this and recreate a more realistic view of the world around us.

nihilism is a state of mind but since not all people perceive reality equally, some will be better than others to make realistic judgements. this is why we need leadership in a society: few people have the ability to lead others and take responsibility for a community.

the way we think, behave and act is directly linked to our biological make up, so one could say that you to a certain degree are born to become a better or worse nihilist, but the choice to reject morality and embrace cold logic is one that all people can make, given they have the courage to do so. we have to take full use of our abilities and nihilism is the most direct way of doing this.

therefore there is no ideology or established philosophy behind nihilism; it's a method by which we evaluate and re-evaluate ideas to test them against reality. from this we develop a coherent philosophy or ideology but always with nihilism as a framework. there is no religious cult to which you can subscribe and become a nihilist; you have to open your eyes and use your body and mind to become one with the world.

the fact that our perception of reality is subjective, doesn't automatically mean that our perceptions are *equal* and that there is no common reference for personal judgement. your life affects the life of others, simply because everything in our world is interconnected. hinduism explains this well, so do most indoeuropean pagan philosophies.

"TV-John" is indeed a natural product of the evolutionary cycle. nature tends to breed a lot of these, especially under circumstances where diseases, cold winters and wars don't weed them out. during those times, these elements of humanity prosper like rabbits and will soon take over, unless someone installs leadership, oppresses and/or weeds them out. the evolution is based upon natural selection and when we form civilizations, we need to enforce that ourselves by selecting good people to breed for the future. "TV-Johns" aren't necessarily "bad" people but when they team up together, they become a destructive force that will dumb everything down to their level. that is why societies run by "TV-Johns" are failures.

egomania is essentially an obsession with the ego. nihilists don't deny ego; we can't escape our inner world, however, we must make sure that they correlate to reality as well as possible. another way of understanding this is how we view abstractions: some are true, some are false - all according to the logic of our common reality. that's our reference.

the concept of "meta-good" means there are certain "horrible" things in life that we cannot escape: pain, death, sadness, loneliness and sodomy. however, since these are essential parts of life as a whole (what is life without death?), it seems most realistic to simply accept these horrors and move on. we've now transcended both good and bad to achieve a "meta-good" state of mind. other bad things like crowd revolt, environmental disasters and political corruption are also bad, but these are things we can change; that bad things exist doesn't automatically mean that we should give up on the good things -- on the contrary, it means we have to fight for them. that is the philosophy of meta-good from a nihilist point of view.

i hope these humble answers provide some insight to the questions you asked.

you ask good questions. bands from the crossover between speed and death metal, most notably destruction, rigor mortis, kreator, sadus and slayer, helped push the genre toward its next evolution.

it is often difficult to listen to these bands at the current time because so much has happened since they were new. however, i think there is an important lesson in what they created: that the structure of the song makes the biggest difference. kreator, for example, wrote some of the greatest riffs in human history, but were unable to fit them coherently into songs. most black metal and death metal bands now could learn from this lesson in the type of songwriting that is specific to metal past 1982 or so.

i am planning more reviews for the future and feeling that many of these bands, as well as primal influences on metal, need to be integrated into the text.

i found some old demos from the late 1980s and posted them here:

http://www.anus.com/metal/hall/YaBB.cgi?board=metal_talk;action=display;num=1200757285

you might enjoy dark reign, which is a crossover between speed metal and music in the style of possessed or imprecation.

- goat

the question here really becomes how far one wants to go with any given design. we can force the stupid into lower roles, and then be responsible for them, or admit the lives they're living will always engender resentment and so they will be a liability, and they're obsolete. the workers and drones have a nasty habit of rising up and killing off the smart. for this reason, there is no need to keep them around and some pressing needs to acknowledge their obsolenscence and breed them out or let an economic natural selection purge them.

a cycle of business, or a cycle of reward? any thing can be sold as a product, but that doesn't mean the motivation behind it was limited to selling it as a product.

personally, i'm not against artists getting reward for their art, but i acknowledge that the best of metal has generally not amounted to any substantial amount of money, so there's another reason people make it.

- goat

speaking of wikipedia, this was interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Rouge

what you've found is that all of these ideas are so closely related as to be essentially variants of one tradition. this is the key to why it is hard to find information about the past.

essentially, what we are doing is pulling back the bristles of a paintbrush covered in paint, and letting go, flicking a cloud of spatters onto our subject and a screen behind it. we can see a silhouette suggested by where spatters are wholly absent, but we never know what we are actually seeing.

the ancient indo-europeans did not write much down, or if they did, it became lost. they feared the way symbols could replace reality. as a result, studying them is difficult, just like finding original pagan documents is impossible.

i would do the following:

1) for context, read spengler and/or toynbee;
2) familiarize yourself with the middle ages literature;
3) dig up some archaeological books for the rest;
4) corroborate with luigi cavalli-sforza's work on genetic drifts.

on the whole, this will give you a reasonable perspective.

i think the best work for tying together #2 and #3 comes from the roman historians, but i am no expert here; most of my knowledge comes from literature and genetics texts.

it is rewarding to have a pursuit in life that itches you with curiosity, and so you are fortunate. if you find anything tangible that starts to answer your questions, consider reporting back to us, as we'd like to publish thoughtful articles on this topic.

indeed!

- goat

it's never a disturbance to answer intelligent questions.

it seems to me, and there is some scientific study on this, that plants not only feel pain but can transmit it to each other, especially of the same species. however, they lack neurosis in feeling pain; they are, perhaps because they have no option to move, entirely at peace with fate as a concept and reality. they remind me of network clusters the way they collaborate.

pets... it depends on how they're kept and why. i like animals; i don't like pet stores and the way most people treat their animals. it's a rite of passage to responsibility to care for the life of a critter, and since i like dogs better than most humans :) i have to say it's an important phase, at least as i see the "maturation" process.

hope that's interesting and answers your questions.

- goat

our search here is complicated by the fact that, due to the ways one gets AIDS, few people will admit in public that they or their loved ones have AIDS or have died from it. this is why celebrity obituaries generally list their cause of death as pneumonia or cancer.

while it is possible that chuck's family is telling the truth about his disease, it is more likely that his cancer was a byproduct of his AIDS infection which rampaged out of control after he failed to get retrovirals in time. his death certificate says he died of pneumonia, which is the most common AIDS-related cause of death.

what is most likely is that all of us are playing an elaborate game where we do not admit what chuck did to get AIDS, and so we talk about the cancer as if it were the cause and not the symptom. AIDS was the cause; the cancer, if it existed, the symptom. (you cannot actually die of AIDS alone; AIDS disables your immune system, and then something else like pneumonia or any number of cancers, most famously kaposi's sarcoma, actually kills you)

at the ANUS, we're baffled by why people are hung up on this. so he was bisexual, in addition to being a pederast. is this that big of a deal? chuck lived his life as he wanted to, and now he's dead, so we should honor his memory first and foremost by not lying about what killed him.

- goat

your definition of nihilism is that of one giving up on life.

just because there's no inherent meaning or purpose to our existence, doesn't mean we can't create one ourselves, which is what this site is about. see the possibilities? we're no longer held back by morals, ethics or other dogmatic constraints. we're set free by the emptiness of life, only to seize it by its throat and shape it according to our will. we shape the tomorrow.

read more here: http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/nihil/

all great civilizations throughout history have been fascist, that is, they've embraced the idea of an aristocratic/feodal leadership. when people bring up the "failure" of fascism they mostly point to fascist italy under mussolini's rule and nazi germany under hitler's command. these nations didn't collapse because of fascism, but rather due to the fact that they were surrounded by aggressive democratic nations that attacked them. modern fascism "lost" because it lost the world wars, despite brave attempts to resist the overthrow.

a fascist leader isn't necessarily "superior," although we hope he's both highly intelligent, strategic, brave and idealistic in spirit. leadership is simply another form of specialized labour. fascism is based upon true leadership, while democracy is a bureaucratic mob-placebo for the same. checks and balances do little good here since the whole system eventually goes corrupt. democracy today, especially in the US, is controlled by rich oligarchs and the politicians are both bought and are forced to cater to bread and circus culture. today this is not even controversial to say; we all know about the lobby groups and their immense power of world politics. it's a totalitarian loop worse than any fascist nation imaginable.

you ask questions and assume we disagree on these, when what we disagree on is method.

i believe the universe created itself, and by universe i mean the mathematical order of all existence, and that it continues to evolve for the sake of reaching a higher level of that existence. growth is its maxim. the physical world exchanges energy between containers so that it runs perpetually, or as close to it as possible, and what it produces is an intangible: information, of ever-increasing complexity of design and compression of data by architectonic sharing, e.g. repeated patterns serving repeated roles. in short, i believe the universe is its own thought, and that this is less paradoxical than having a creator with no origin who made it all on a whim and needs it for his own service; more like, your creator is your interpretation of the information the universe creates, and your mythos is a symbolic explanation for the exchange of data/energy between physicality and informationality.

so no, i do not need god or jesus christ. i have the design of the universe, shared with human (and other) thought, and i believe in that because it is more realistic, more representational, and ultimately, more hopeful in that it does not vest our hope in a third-party symbol separate from humanity and world alike.

- goat

interesting. i think that what many consider to be christian values are mostly european values, not shared by christians in other parts of the world. and then there's a problem with most european christians, in that they view the soul as more important than the body, so are accepting of other groups and their (contrary to western ideals) traditions.

there are many manifestations of this error, but the error itself is our biggest problem. i don't know if any of the musicians you mentioned are jewish, except varg vikernes, who has a jewish grandmother.

- goat