Alternative titles: Loss of the Aspirational, The Cult of the Institution
Introduction
I believe there are two modes of being in conflict with each other—it is a pattern of life rather than something exclusive to race or sex. I have found these tendencies in people so strongly correlated that as horse comes with hooves and gallops or birds come with wings and fly, so do these traits come together to create a wholly integrated organism.
Large-scale societies, technology, the cult of the institution rather than the individual, construction, truth, and logic stand on one end. But in the modern age the destructive and entropic forces are overwhelming the Western Civilization of old. We sense this to be true in institutions perpetuating fraud and nonsensical research that often cannot even hold a candle to illuminating the theoretical frameworks of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century.
| Polar | Equatorial |
|---|---|
| Cult of the Institution | Cult of the Leader |
| Photographs of Material Constructs | Photographs of People |
| Large-scale societies | Small-scale societies |
| Trees | Vines |
| North | South |
| Construction | Destruction |
| Parsimony and Restraint | Waste |
| Logic | Emotion |
| Virtue | Self-aggrandizement |
| Responsibility | Evasion |
| Excellence | Mediocrity |
| Order | Chaos |
| Detail | Obscurity |
| Differentiation | Homogenization |
| Hierarchy | Unranked, undifferentiated |
| Action | Spectation |
| Definite | Indefinite |
| Discrete | Continuous |
| Capitalization, italics, boldness | Lowercase Sentences |
| Directness | Subtext |
| Truth | Lies |
| Fatalism | Romanticism |
| Old | Young |
| Adults | Children |
| Writing | Speech |
| Gravity | Unseriousness |
| Gravitas | Levitas |
| History | Feelings |
| Music of the 19th Century | Pop Music, Jazz |
| Prescriptive | Interpretive |
| The Hall | The Stadium |
| Small-scale trust | Large-group mobs and masses |
| Naturalism | Plastic Surgery |
| Characteristics more common in men | Characteristics more common in women |
| Characteristics more common in Northern races | Characteristics more common in Southern races |
| Modern man | Prehistoric man |
This is not a criticism because what man aspires to depends upon his ability, his ability is predetermined by his ability before birth in the form of prenatal nutrition. I speak mainly from the perspective of one who did aspire like those generations before me, only because I am of that type, in ways no different from how a bird sings or the dog barks.
In the past man sought to build to the skies and see the stars: the first skyscrapers must’ve been a marvel to behold. Now man seeks to expand the arena or football stadium, the bread and circuses.
Teachers once sought discipline and learning in their students. Now they dress up like movie characters and seek to be funny lest the students review them poorly for making things ’too difficult.’
Learning, once valued, becomes a stamp and certificate. Truth replaced with lies.
The written word gives way to the spoken word. That who speaks with clarity gives way to those who add emotion, humor, and moral grandstanding.
Attention to detail is thrown away; as long as it works and makes money is enough.
Apple’s Memojis as user pictures compared to the original classic designs shows the continued emotional degeneration of society.
Logic and deduction versus mimesis. Truth versus social validation.
Music that is played versus streaming, stages, and things you watch.
Thinking of the Great Man is a small society thought, only large institutions where the leader is replaceable can guide large works.
Paper tests versus everything being online and on Canvas.
Large-scale bureaucratic structure becomes small-scale fiefdom.
Long term becomes short term.
These patterns of life are satiating to some, but for me I feel as if I ate water and air.
I have spoken with a Muslim-German friend in Hamburg lately. He describes this “dualism” and “either or” as a strong feature of Christianity. Though I have drawn the lines clearly, do actions that mix the two not impede the progression of technological advancement, and that one society of people united in the polar temperament would find itself rapidly outcompeting all with mixed or equatorial temperaments?
Why this happens
The North-South climate
With the North comes the winter or the apocalypse, a sort of yearly ritual not unlike a flood which washes away others to death. From this people think long term and are suited for material construction and abstraction in a way that those of the South rarely have. For in a place where existence and food is comparatively easier and able to grow all year round, different temperaments assume form.
When resources are scarce, selection occurs at high rates.
Time becomes circular and there is no sense of seasons or progress. It is just one long and dreary haze. Of course until recently population pressures were small so that there was enough to go around. Rapid breeding without commensurate increase in technological development leads to poor living standards lest some small group with the foresight and diligence to survive shall triumph in these equatorial countries.
When I visited the forest of Massachusetts from my youth a decade later I felt the trees had barely grown. Yet in Georgia they towered higher and higher over just a few years while leafy plants and vines multiplied manyfold in my empty flowerbox. From this I came to observe a certain truth: the equatorial temperament grows and expands quickly, dies early, and leaves fewer traces compared to the polar temperament. We see this in the lower longevity of peoples of SSA compared to EA.
Evola revealed these truths to me, and in observation of peoples I think it is fundamentally true. One is like water, splashing against the levee wall. In small chunks no matter what it is composed of, rock will become lost in an ocean. But if the wall continues to move forward at a slow pace water will soon find itself enclosed.
Small groups of people living through harsh winters had to survive generations over generations knowing one another. You must spend your time working instead of emoting if you are to survive. Our modern contradiction is that technology has made survival easy and people’s willpower weak; this then leads to its destruction.
Virtue appeals, perhaps, to those who have lived multiple winters for Darwin in SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX notes that self-aggrandizement becomes selected as the virtuous are prone to die out. I meant to go back to this article, but I wonder if it is a female selection trait.
What happens, I think, in southern climates and small-scale societies is that natural resources are relatively abundant, and this leads to a sort of “human-generation” machine, where the only constraint is how many children the woman can generate and how many children the males create to fight against other groups given enough food and supplies. These then become metrics of value and success in such societies, which are biologically imprinted.
The biological reasons
As mankind moves from small tribes and villages to cities, nation-states, and then international entities we should expect our underlying biology to become more selected for this. We see that the embryo resembles a fish, a reptile, and other animals as we grow. Could it not be that arrested developement, such as prenatal births or improper nutrition during gestation traps the born child at an older prehistoric stage of human existence?
And that such existence in the world is merely a production of one’s internal state into the environment, they will exhibit the mannerisms necessary for small-scale societies. In a large-scale society they will be excluded, but if the entire society is metabolically degenerating over time, their behavior will seem normal.
I believe at the high levels of metabolism, the different races and the two sexes are united in their outlook and approach. But as they degenerate so that even though one might be of a northern race they will exhibit characteristics and mannerisms more common in the prehistoric southern races.
On the Distant Future
Technology is to pull matter out of air, will out of power, writing out of mind, essence out of aether. It is a lonely life to pursue this excellence and to practice day after day, but you love it because it reminds you of what it means to be human. It is the capability for abstraction that makes us who we are, the ability to change internal state in response to environmental observation that gives us dominion over animals and nature. We are part of it, we should not disrespect it for it is what has made us, but in many ways we stand beyond it like something will eventually stand beyond men themselves.
Mankind as a space power thus must draw from these inspirations yet launch from the equator. This can only mean that Polar temperament must triumph over Equatorial temperament if we are to have a future—otherwise we will be dancing and dancing on the planet forever, blind to our reality, as the sun swallows us up—this is a romanticism and ultimately an illusion, like the want of remaining young forever. Perhaps, just perhaps, will science yield a breakthrough, but given puffed up faces and other medical mis-interventions I am not holding my breath awaiting it.
In fatalism we accept our death and end, and only in then do we have the ability to look down the harsh cold abyss of life and struggle itself. I pray every time I get on a plane for it could be my last; our lives are not certain and safety is never guaranteed. Only with the careful eyes and diligence of millions present and past combined with their mental accumulations do we fly at all. Where will we be in the future, hurtling through space into the abyss? Will everyone be prepared, or will it be like today: the tireless lives of few to support the illusions of the many?
Know that Man Proposes and God Disposes: we are free to do as we wish in this world but fate will have other plans for us despite the lengthiest of preparations. Compared to the New World or the North and South Poles: the cosmos, I think, are not an easy frontier to overcome.
