Faced with a future that looks grim from any angle, we in the West tend to become desperate. The reign of nihilism, hedonism and materialism has left us hollow. This hollowness is both psychological and social. As it expands from within, the pathologies that hold sway over the living generations’ interior worlds become social phenomena. Modern societies are ruled by mental maladies more than any in recorded history, as I think the phenomena of mass hysteria during the Middle Ages and most prominently during the Protestant Reformation merely presaged our age. The few of us who fancy ourselves sane amidst this madness suffer the weight of the psychosis that surrounds us. This in itself is a malady of the mind that has the potential to drive us as insane as everyone else. To seek escape is natural. Escape however, as healthy a reflex as it may be, is not a solution to the problem. By definition, escape leaves the problem unaffected, merely saving the escapee from its effects.
If we want to fix the problem, we have to diagnose it, formulate an answer, and organise. These three things, though they appear simple, are in practice a nigh insurmountable peak. In order to diagnose the problem we need a philosophy. In order to formulate the answer, we need philosophers. In order to organise, we need large groups of people sharing a common goal, guided by a single philosophy and looking for instruction to philosophers they trust.
Anyone who disputes that philosophy is as important as I claim it to be, merely knows it under another name. As unconscious as the actions of the average normie going about his life seem, they are profoundly affected by philosophy and the people who disseminated it across society. The currency of nihilistic philosophies, which proclaim that life is ultimately meaningless, should never be underestimated in the modern world. Anyone who takes the time to think about these things is moulded in the shape of nihilism because the unconscious assumption of modern society is materialism. Which means that even those who never take the time to think about such things will unconsciously go about their lives as if materialism were true. I believe most people cannot formulate this, they have no idea they're doing it, yet with their every breath they affirm materialism. And behind these unconscious assumptions of society are myriads of intellectuals, scientists, sundry experts in all fields, who guide and have guided us to this point, and who every day provide the structural support for materialism’s reign. And so those who would wish to change the world must contend with the fact that they seek to replace the world's priestly caste.
The philosophers of our age, forming the priestly caste which gives the masses the grounding for their opinions, are the materialists. The social bonds that once kept most things in plain sight having been dissolved, these people are largely unseen by the masses. There are many influential thinkers who chipped away at humanity’s certainty about the world little by little until nothing was left but the realer-than-the-territory map we now inhabit. These thinkers did not form a shadowy cabal to change the world’s thinking process by means of brute force; they reacted to natural changes over generations, giving voice to humanity’s little doubts about itself, until the doubts consumed everything. Even so, the thinkers who shaped modernity remain hidden. But a trickle-down process allows the masses contact with low-level disseminators of the dominant ontology. It is there that we find the people who say “science” and mean materialism, the people who are invited to talk shows to explain how insignificant we are in the cosmos, the people who offer pithy self-help guidance to a depressed society with the brimstone Mesmerism of a big tent evangelist, the people who import Eastern wisdom only to apply over it a coating of materialist chintz so as to sell it on TikTok, the people who make video essays on YouTube to expound on the transgressive anti-capitalist queerness of the Legendary Pokémon, the people who put on grotesque masks of false beauty to lead the masses on a sad chase after fame and celebrity as the only salvation available.
The Brahmins of our age are all preaching a message of hedonism in the Epicurean sense, minus the Epicureanism (how much better would the world be if the pundits of today all pushed Epicurean plain living, but alas). Live for today, make your own meaning, emancipate all forms of life for we can expect no gods to give us their boons, make money get bitches, etc etc. Many forms, one source, a single class of materialist Brahmins behind the scenes, and a bewildering array of disseminators on stage. Our modern priestly caste may not be united in its views, but their dominion is absolute, and their message pliable enough to serve many branching subtypes. I can understand scepticism at the broad reach of my net. Surely not all these social maladies can be traced to Michel Foucault and other such philosophers, one could reasonably say. Indeed they cannot. But philosophers like Foucault and every manifestation of modernity’s ills bubble forth out of the same process, the process which took away our view of the world as a divine garden and replaced it with a view of the world as a desert of ultimate voidness. That I do claim, and that is true. However many different flavours of materialism are out there, I remain ever confident they are to be traced to the same source.
What then of those who demand change, who want modernity gone? Are they immune to the effect of materialism? Or does its terrible reach extend even to them? Are there not those among them who believe that philosophy is post hoc rationalisation of Machiavellian power moves? Who they are and what they do is a subject that deserves too great an exposition to fit in this article, and as such I do not feel compelled to go into detail here as to why such people are yet more examples of materialism's total control over society. Their presence, however, is the best illustration of the failure to launch a counter-proposal to High Modernity. Which brings us to the problem of groups. If those of us dissatisfied with the current state of things not only cannot agree on the philosophy, but cannot even agree on the nature of philosophy, what hope does anyone swimming against the current have really? As the starting point must by necessity be agreeing on a common philosophy, the presence of people who reject philosophy represents terrible defeat before the endeavour has even begun. In as simple terms as possible: we cannot go anywhere unless we get rid of the materialists. Unless we draw a single first line, we will discover soon enough that we have nothing in common with those we call allies. The very first stage has yet to be achieved: agreeing on a common philosophy.
In political terms, the two most general tendencies display shifting philosophical conclusions, but their philosophical starting points can be more easily pinpointed. The left and the right have launched their separate critiques of the modern world. But of the two, the right has more loudly proclaimed its opposition to modernity qua modernity, whereas the left has generally claimed that progress was halted, betrayed, sidelined, or elsewise has not fulfilled its potential. Can we then say that, very broadly, the party against modernity is the right, whereas the party for modernity is the left? Certain groups pose problems for this view, but it is a generalisation that very much holds water. An example of such a group are the libertarians of the American type, who defend modernity as radically emancipatory for the individual, but should we merely wish to claim that the right is the anti-modernity party, their presence is as easily explained as the presence of any mixed and idiosyncratic group within a broad political context. Should we wish to go deeper, we will find a far more illuminating reason for their presence among the right. Here it must also be remarked that America and Europe have different political climates. The Rothbardian hardliners of the Mises Institute offer profound insights into a uniquely American form of right-wing politics, boasting among its ranks provocateurs such as Walter Block, the secular Jewish dynamo (author of The Privatization of Roads and Highways: Human and Economic Factors among other fascinating and endlessly cheeky works) and the Traditionalist Catholic Jeffrey Tucker (author of, among others, The Market Loves You: Why You Should Love It Back, wherein he expounds on the manifold ways modern life delivered unto us glorious freedom from the horrors of pre-modern life), but such insights do not properly belong here, just as these people don’t properly belong in the broader anti-modern right.
Since the right then has chosen as its battle a battle against modernity, does it have, leaving aside the fringe exceptions, a common philosophy at its base? It does not, and this for the modern right is the most terrible bane, as it means it is not politics, not a moment, not even a tendency, but a mere style. To be right-wing has been reduced to saying edgy things. This explains the presence of libertarians among the right; absent a common philosophy, they too say edgy, “right”-ey things, and so these defenders of modernity can be counted among the right together with its most virulent opponents. In right-wing politics, nihilism triumphs yet again. The left meanwhile, though fractured, can boast at the very least a common philosophical tendency as its backbone. Some 50 years ago, Marxism was all-powerful. This has changed, but Marxism remains a potent force for the left. It provides cohesion, common talking points and common goals, and though it no longer dominates as a concrete structure, it still serves as a dominant framework within which the left can move. Even leftists who explicitly oppose Marxism are working from within the bones of its gargantuan carcass, which displays still some rotting edifices of meat. Though not a monolith, Marxism has given the left a priceless gift in unity even in its fading. Alas, the right can boast of no such thing. Rightists are still stuck debating the very basics upon which they could theoretically one day create a launching point for a movement.
If we accept that the 20th century was the left's great failure, we could perhaps be lulled into thinking the 21st shall be the right's time in the sun. So far, a few years into that century, such a point of view looks to be a severe overestimation of the right. Though it has grown substantially and taken a few new shapes, it remains fractured at the very root, and thus finds itself unable to launch any grand endeavours. The right cannot offer any unifying philosophy, or even a broad philosophical tendency. It remains the space of the eclectic and the eccentric. Within it you will find materialists, nihilists, existentialists, perspectivists, anti-metaphysicalists, idealistic monists, theists, atheists, libertarians, authoritarians, cat-lovers, dog-lovers, prudes, degenerates, trads and feds. The scene is chaos. This all is going nowhere. And so those who wish to replace modernity are compelled merely to escape it. Having no grounds upon which to form coherently a movement against modernity, the rightist tendency to flee arises. The instinct to retreat is born of a psychological malaise which itself is a reaction to the realisation that the right doesn’t have what it takes.
There are two stages of retreat. One is retreat to the political ghetto, the other retreat in physical space. In the political realm, retreat most often takes the form of voting for the small party the media calls “far-right” that runs on a platform of ultra-Christian close-the-borders wink-wink-maybe-we’re-actual-Nazis-hehe “patriotism” (their words). This is a wasted vote and indeed a form of political suicide. There is a special place in politics, always under 10% when the votes are tallied, which I will call “the far-right zoo”. I will categorically tell you there is no escaping the far-right zoo. Once stuck there, you will be an easy target. Don’t vote for such people, don’t engage with such people, don’t go near such people. In the immortal words of a war hero from a more civilised age, it’s a trap. The next stage of retreat, when even this option is denied the enemy of modernity, is the true last resort: fleeing from civilisation. This form of retreat signifies the most radical defeat.
This ultimate retreat is a kind of political mid-life crisis. The psychological state behind it is one of existential dread, of recognising that the world as is has no place for you. This causes a great terror to arise in the soul, which activates the instinct to flee. If one has exhausted all other options, one comes to fear the clock, much like that old pirate from the story about the boy who would not grow up. The feeling of “running out of time” is the essence of the mid-life crisis, and anyone who chooses retreat is admitting to the world he is no longer young. Boldness has left his heart, and in its stead lives a neurotic compulsion to decorate one’s corner with what in his fevered mind he calls “a legacy”. In this state of distress, a thought born of desperation becomes dominant: I can’t change the world, but if I retreat into the countryside and buy some land and have a litter of kids and teach them my values, my descendants will have a chance to fix the world. Alas, alas, such is but folly. As reasonable as this seems, it is no more than “early days at the Führerbunker” mindset. Even if you reject my psychological reading of it as a mid-life crisis, you can’t reject the practical implications of politics reduced to a lone family against the world. It is the very abandonment of politics in the most forceful manner possible. If you don’t fix the world, you will never outbreed those who seek to replace you, and the world, having moved past you in your former lands, will come to your door, where your descendants—those among them who have not escaped your Amish compound to enjoy the delectably deceiving pleasures of the outside world, that is—will be overtaken. You know what happens in the Führerbunker when the realisation dawns that hope is lost. You don’t want this for your descendants. No one will know where their graves are located, and people will spit at the mention of their name.
The notion that you can “outbreed the competition” is delusional on account of one more factor: the unpredictable. All it takes for the demographic picture to completely flip is the release of a sufficiently cheap virtual reality technology that can fool the mind into accepting it as real. As soon as that happens, the pleb masses will cease being the ones of fruitful loins, passing the reproductive baton to the elites. The new cabal of people positioned and inclined to not live in the virtual world will be the ones having the children as the masses escape into virtuality. This is merely an example, and many others, equally plausible, can be presented which result in the same thing. Whoever bets everything on the “retreat to the wilds” approach can see his every calculation evaporate with a single technological breakthrough or equivalent historic shift. All the retreating types must keep in mind that they act from a position of weakness; the people they consider their enemies control society and its technics. The retreater’s calculations never seem to account for change, because the retreater’s entire worldview is based on fear and anxiety. It is, in fact, nothing but a mid-life crisis, and the retreater will be happy to step out, “do his duty” of reproducing, and leave his children to the transhumanist wolves.
If retreat is not a viable option, what then is one to do? If you identify with the left, the answer is far easier: you have a solid foundation, so work within the parameters of the modern left in order to influence it in the direction you believe is correct. If you identify with the right, the answer is harsh and unappealing: you have to formulate a philosophical alternative to modernity upon which to build a new right. Joining the clownish far-right ghetto is not an option. The left hates you for disagreeing with its priors, so you can’t join with them (see far-right ghetto option if you want to be called Nazi and go nowhere). Giving up urban space is not an option. The only thing left to do is create a new moral centre that can take on the left. The problem goes far deeper than anything shuffling around in physical space will solve. Groups must be formed around a new philosophy (it won’t be, of course, strictly speaking new). Around this philosophy everything else will grow. A true moral centre to challenge the current one. Not merely saying edgy things, not reheating old solutions grown impotent by modernity’s touch, but a true proposal, its veins pulsing with the vigour that once led us to do great things, clean from the taint of materialism. A task not for the meek and the retreating, but for the bold and the advancing. This subject I intend to treat in a separate article.