First Principles
In light of my new status as Patriarch, I figure now’s as good a time as any to revisit the foundational principles that inform my thoughts on Human Nature and Political Economy. The broad schools of thought by which you could label me – Atheist, Men’s Rights Advocate, Libertarian, Anarchist, Capitalist, Rationalist, Reactionary, Objectivist, or Existentialist to name a few – might serve as good shorthand to sum up my stance, but in the Immortal Words of Eliezer Yudkowsky, Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult.
And I ain’t down with religion – particularly not Dawkin’s.
The problems with ideology is tri-fold. First is the sheer complexity of the thing; Nietzsche (for instance) only penned a few tomes, the sort which you could get through in a long weekend, if you wanted – but that’s just the start of things. Philosophy (and this includes Natural Philosophy) demands exploration and interpretation, so by the time a century goes past there’s been so much critique of the matter, and so much evidence brought in through the new heuristic, that you could devote your entire adult life to studying any of the philosophies mentioned above that you become Impotent in the process (people who do this are known as PhDs, and they have little influence on the world beyond misinforming University students).
No one can know everything about anything; specialization is the name of the game.
The second problem arises from the over-abundance of information, and the effect of steeping yourself in any Ideology – Objectivism is particularly bad for this. If you study the ideology professionally, you don’t have time to study its critiques – not fully, anyway. Thus you become convinced you have arrived at the End Of History, and all knowledge fits into your paradigm. This conviction will lead a man to massage data which disagrees with his Great Idea, and he will no longer be able to see the forest for the trees.
Incidentally, this is partly the cause of Intellectual Fashions going in and out of style; whatever Approach the majority start studying in any given year, ends up becoming the New Truth for the following generation (that is to say, that Random Genetic Drift could accomplish this all on its own, even without Leftward forces at play in our Institutions).
The third problem with Ideology is how quickly the terms get perverted. I don’t simply mean the Anarchists over on Reddit who believe in redistributing wealth; for a sublter example look at the word ‘Capitalist’. When I or the Captain uses the word, we’re talking about the sort of people who put their Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honour on the line to build a new Factory; when the critics use the term they’re talking about the embedded money interests who grow rich, no matter how badly they fail. Privileging one definition over the other is problematic.
You see, what we’ve got is a deformed conjoined twin; seperating the two is going to take one hell of a sharp scalpel, and even then, it might not be worth the time.
So let’s forget about Ideology for a moment; better to admit if you don’t know something then try and force everything into a paradigm you read in a pamplet. Protectionism for instance – why does the practice seem to diverge so much from the theory?
Thanks to the Wisdom of Old Age, I can just put that one on the back burner for a while, along with the rest of the stuff I don’t know The Answer to.
In the meantime, let’s consider the grounding for all these Schools; which ideas, which ground-level heuristics do all of us Alt Right Folk subscribe to? After all, it’s not just the conclusions of the Left that we disagree with – if that were the case we could run the numbers, and figure out who was right. No, it’s deeper than that, our foundational principles differ from them, putting us in diametrical opposition.
I’ve been thinking on it over the past few weeks, and I think they can neatly be summed up in three major points: Mortality, Biology, and Transcendence.
Mortality
To put it simply, the Universe is a Hostile Place. At the end of the day, if we don’t eat, we die. Good intentions don’t matter – trying your best doesn’t matter – results are what matter.
Losers always whine about their best. Winners
go home and fuck the prom queen.
This principle applies to everything – if your car won’t work, it’s because you didn’t fix it right. If your business fails, it’s because you didn’t have a competetive product. If the cops take you out, you should have gone in with a better battle plan. On the individual level luck can come into the mix, sure – but over time luck cancels out.
Contrast this with the Leftist perspective – with them it’s always about the End State. They imagine their perfect Utopia (results may vary) and try and force the economy into this mould; no business should fail, no person should be poor, no hiccups are allowed in the stock market. Nice world, if you can get it, but what winds up happening is that they take a few components off the Brand New BMW, to repair the junker that just got in an accident; now you have a shitty BMW, and a junker that still doesn’t run.
We are mortals; this sucks, granted, but it is the Truth. Pretending we can all be Rich and Famous will just guarantee that we all wind up Broken Dream-ed and Poor.
And speaking of how the Left shoves their heads in the sand…
Biology
The evidence is in; genes matter. IQ is 0.7 heritable. Olympic Black Runners vs White Swimmers is not an issue of Racism. Men and Women have different talents and abilities.
But you know what? We don’t even need to go there – different Nuture environments and Game Theory will suit our purposes – calling it Biology just reinforces how deeply rooted it is.
Individuals are all different; groups – in that they’re quantifiable at all – are all different. Different people want different things in life, and they’re going to have disparate results, by any metric. So will groups. Furthermore, as individuals (this is where the game theory comes in) they’re going to be ‘self-interested’ within the range of Human self-interest – being charitable, for example, is something that most humans are interested in.
While there is certainly some variability built into the system (are Asians really better at Math, or do they just have better study habits – and are those habits environmental or genetic?), but for practical purposes they may as well be fixed. Barring a friendly singularity, we aren’t going to isolate the 300-odd variables that come into play.
That won’t stop the Leftists from trying, however.
Just as they try and Force the economy into their New World Order, so do they try and force the individual into becoming their New Communist Man – and they’re failing just as bad as the Ruskies did. 50 years of propaganda, and what do we have to show for it? An atomized society with voting blocks based upon race, creed, and gender.
Ironically enough, if you treat people as individuals they tend to cohese into a uniform hole; when you force them into a mold, they break, and atomize.
It’s not fair that some people are smarter, handsomer, and more charismatic than others, but a Reactionary has the Moral Fortitude to acknowledge such a bracing truth.
Transcendence
This is such a fundamental human concept it’s hard to even point it out – it’s like becoming aware of the fact that you blink – and the level of Sociopathy necessary to ignore it is shocking to a Man in possession of a Soul.
Maybe I’ll just let this ‘pacifist’ explain it for you:
My Sweet Satan, how I hate that song. A few choice quotes:
Nothing to kill or die for… No need for greed or hunger… Imagine all the people/Living for today
Let me posit something: if there is nothing you’d be willing to kill for, no cause you’d be willing to die for, then you are little more than a callow slave, desperately in lust with a pathetic existence. A Human -goddamned- Being is nothing if they don’t live for something bigger than themselves, whether it be their Family, the Truth, their Art, or simply the principle of 2+2=4 – is it any wonder, then, that one can easily find Leftist Professors with Tenure by the Dozens decrying all of those concepts?
Each and every one of them, in love with destruction, full of contempt for all creation.
So thus the third and final principle of a Reactionary: that He would sooner die a Free Man, than live as a slave.
I might not have all the answers, but at least I know where to start. Keep your powder dry, folks.
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