Introduction
The downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, the destruction of their nation-States, of The West itself, is something not only to be desired, but also striven toward by all practical means.
Why? Because as mentioned in Chapter Two of The Mythos of Vindex, “The White Hordes of Homo Hubris…have consistently and for many centuries been the destroyers, par excellence, of The Numinous.” In addition, it is and has been The White Hordes of Homo Hubris (Footnote 1) who are and who were the natural allies and the footsoldiers of the Magian, and who are responsible for the present triumph, in the West, of the Magian and the Magian ethos, which triumph has enabled the creation of the tyrannical, dishonourable, modern nation-States with their abstract laws, their materialism and their mechanistic so-called “progress”. For is The White Hordes of Homo Hubris who – doing the bidding of their Magian masters, knowingly or unknowingly – have used brutal force and war to fight and destroy each and every attempt to resist the control of the Magian, just as it is and has been The White Hordes of Homo Hubris who have brutally and ruthlessly put down each and every rebellion against the Magian ethos, and who at the time of writing are engaged in yet another war against those who seek to free themselves from Magian control and who desire to live in communities free of the stifling, un-numinous materialistic, mechanistic, Magian ethos.
Why have The White Hordes of Homo Hubris done this? Why are they, and why have they been, the allies, servants and footsoldiers of the Magian? Is it because of their ethnicity – something innate? Or is it because they themselves have enthusiastically adopted, or became infected with, the Magian ethos itself? Fundamentally, it is combination of both these factors.
The Character of The White Hordes
The White Hordes have, and have had for at least two thousand or more years, a certain innate character (Footnote 2). This character is one of arrogant aggression; of arrogant interference; of cunning; and especially of hubris – that belief, that instinct, that impatience – often born from some feeling of “Destiny” – that “they know better”, that they are somehow “more civilized” than others, and that “progress” or change is in itself desirable. In addition, they seem to have some innate desire to manufacture and to identify with – and some kind of addiction to – causal abstractions; to impose categories, -isms, and -ologies upon themselves, others, the world, and the Cosmos itself.
Basically, they are and have been for thousands of years, restless, and have either (1) never managed, en masse, to establish a balance within themselves and so have been unable or unwilling to manufacture – for long – stable, communities and societies which express, manifest and continually presence the numinous, sans abstractions; or (2) have never been able to control, for very long, their primal instincts, their lack of respect for the numinous, and their innate bullying savagery, although they have managed, or rather connived, to convince themselves, and sometimes others, that they, and their ways, are somehow “civilized”, although this so-called “civilized behaviour” of theirs that they have often been so very proud of is and only ever has been at best a thin veneer, and at worst mere pretence, for while showing to others, and the world, a civilized and “honourable” public face, they have hypocritically continued to act, in private, in an altogether different way, as was for so evident, for instance, in the days of the British Raj in India, and of British control in places like East Africa, where the private lives of the individuals did not match the hypocritical high standards they preached about in public and which they attempted to convince people they were examples of.
This utter hypocrisy, this lack of control, this cunning, this aggression, this hubris, this insolence and disrespect of the numinous, this desire for the illusion and the security of abstractions, is so evident, also and more recently, in the behaviour of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris in places like Afghanistan, which they have occupied by force in order to impose their ways, their abstractions, upon the peoples there. Thus, they have yet again disrupted and are attempting to destroy the ways of life of others; and are yet again using force, terror, cunning, lies – and all the other tactics of the insolent – in order to get those peoples to adopt some mythical idealized way of life, which idealized way of life does not even exist and never has existed even in the Western lands of The White Hordes.
Thus, The White Hordes of Homo Hubris are yet again bringing death, destruction, disruption, hunger, and suffering, to others in the name of some mythical un-numinous abstraction. In the case of Afghanistan, it is in the name of the un-numinous abstraction “democracy” and in the name of “peace”, by which the sly White Hordes mean, of course, the so-called “peace” that arises when one surrenders to a bully, that is, surrenders to them.
The character of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris is also evident in their desire to control, to restrain, to “organize” – to try to dominate – Nature. The character of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris is evident in their obsession with causal Time and with “planning”, which obsession anyone who comes from, or who has lived for any time among, other non-Western communities and cultures and cultures, will recognize. For example, individuals who belong to The White Hordes of Homo Hubris will expect others to share their attitude that “causal Time” is valuable, a kind of commodity, and can be measured out, and, indeed, The White Hordes of Homo Hubris have gone to great lengths – as part of their cultural colonialism – to impose their causal Time and their schedules (based on some abstraction), and their causal orientated mechanistic “planning”, on other peoples, world-wide.
Most other cultures, however, have or had an understanding of life as it is – as a slow flow of slow change, in rhythm with Nature, which slow flow of slow natural and local change those individuals accept and which they do not, for the most part, attempt to struggle against. But, for The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, it is constant struggle – for they desire to impose themselves, their “Time”, their abstractions, upon others and upon Nature. For instance, for them, mañana is an irritation, an inconvenience; just as wu-wei is, and just as “InshaAllah” (as commonly used, for example, by Egyptians) is. For The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, a delay of a day, or a week, or more, is unacceptable, just as for most of their kind the subtle delicacy of chadō is a “waste of time”, an irritation, or something “quaint and touristy”; just as the intricacies and meanings of Ram thai – evolved naturally and locally over periods of natural Time – are and were lost on these impatient “foreign devils” and for whom such things are at best something they can momentarily gawp at. For The White Hordes of Homo Hubris have always ridiculed, or dismissed, or seem as inferior, or wanted to change, the natural practices and ways of every single people they have ever come into contact with, from the Native Americans, of North and South America, to the tribes of Africa, to the lands of Khmer and Tai, to the islands of Nihon.
Given their character, their impatience, their hubris and insolence, their desire for an almost instant gratification, their addiction to abstractions, it is no wonder then that The White Hordes of Homo Hubris came to destroy the culture, the communities, the tribes, of others, and have imposed upon other peoples their own unfeeling, their own causal and un-numinous, abstractions, manufacturing thus modern abstract nation-States in place of the subtle numinous culture of Bushido and Samurai, in place of regional small ancestral kingdoms such as Tai, Khmer, and Mon, and trying to destroy and replace the tribal ways of the Ashanti, Afar, Hopi, Tsitsistas, Ndee, Siksika, and the many, many, others whom they often ruthlessly uprooted from their ancestral lands and whom they demanded, often by force, adopt the ways and abstractions of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris.
Now, of course, they and their savants pretend, for the most part, to “treasure and recognize the importance of the world’s cultural diversity”, but what remains of this diversity – after century upon century of military and cultural colonialism by The White Hordes – is for the most part now rootless, not derived from a thriving, living, numinous and tribal way of life which owes little or nothing to the ways, the abstractions, of the West. Such “cultural diversity” is now often only some “tourist attraction” for the tourists of The White Hordes “to enjoy” and gawp at, or something the Western-style governments and nations of other lands have appropriated and which they promote in order to foster a kind of artificial national unity, and a Western-style nationalism, among the citizens of these more-often-than-not Western created new nation-States, over which the West still retains control, directly or covertly, by the threat of military force, by usurious loans, through “aid”, through political and economic blackmail, or by others means.
Furthermore, what The White Hordes and their Magian masters will not tolerate, in the modern world, is another land, another country, other peoples, being free from Western control, free from Western abstractions, and having a way or ways of life that place their own numinous ancestral culture, their own numinous laws, and a tribal way of living, before the mechanistic material “culture” of the West, before the abstract laws of the West, and before the soul-less abstraction of the usury-driven, debt ridden, tax-demanding nation-State. Any and all such attempts by other peoples to free themselves from Western abstractions, Western control or influence, have been and are ruthlessly put down, with the sly bullying White Hordes of Homo Hubris, and their even slyer Magian masters, always manufacturing some “excuse” for their actions, for their intervention, for the crippling sanctions they impose. (Footnote 3)
Adoption of the Magian Ethos
Long before they devolved even further to become – during and after the so-called Industrial Revolution – Homo Hubris, The White Hordes of the old Europe had begun to undermine and disrupt our natural and slowly evolving connexion to the Numinous, based as this connexion was on tribal communities and the law of personal honour. That is, based on a human, individual, scale of things, on personal knowledge of and interaction with and respect for, others, and upon an awareness, often only instinctive, of ourselves as an integral part of Nature. This connexion thus gave rise to a natural and balanced and fundamentally pagan attitude toward life where the individual for the most part had or could strive to have power over their own affairs or at least the basic freedom to defend themselves with weapons and where the only authority was a local, tribal or clan, one, with those in possession of such authority being personally known to the individual and almost always respected by the individual by virtue of being, for instance, clan or tribal elders.
This undermining and this disruption of the numinous by The White Hordes occurred because of their innate restless insolent character, and because of their manufacture of various un-numinous abstractions which – from the times of Ancient Greece – they interposed between themselves and the reality of the Cosmos and which they increasingly began to adhere to or see as “ideals” to be striven for. These abstractions included, of course, the Platonian “ideal” itself, the notion of potestas tribunicia, and the abstraction of a codifiable law, which established the Imperium Romanum. In many ways, it was this abstraction of a codified law, together with the imposition of a remote, impersonal, authority – often maintained by force and almost always sustained by mandatory taxes – which began the unfortunate dominance of The White Hordes and which marked the real beginning of their de-evolution, of their increasing distance from, and disruption of, the numinous. Of their, in brief, wholesale adoption of and belief in profane abstractions over and above the ways of the Numen. For they began to make this abstraction of a codified law and a remote, impersonal, authority, sustained by mandatory taxes, an ideal to be striven for.
However, it was their outward and inward adoption of the abstractions of what became the religion and dogma of the Nazarene that began not only their great and rapid descent back toward barbarism, and thence ultimately toward and into the new subspecies Homo Hubris, but also and importantly led to an alliance with the Magian, which alliance in its beginnings had more to do with usury, avarice and the power of so-called Kings and rulers, than it had to do with changing the world for the worse based on some messianic abstraction or on some prejudiced desire to “civilize the natives”.
Even so, there were times – several times – when some of the peoples from The White Hordes of the old Europe forsook the ways of abstractions and of profanity, and returned to the old ways of balance and a natural paganism. But every time such a natural balance was restored within some communities of the West, it became undermined, and was ultimately destroyed, by the restless insolent abstraction-loving character germane to the White Hordes themselves, often because of the desire to pursue, to believe in, to implement, some un-numinous abstraction; some dogma, so -ism or some -ology, be these -isms or these -ologies deemed to be “political”, social, or “religious”, which terms themselves (politics, religion, social) are of course just more examples of the un-numinous illusive causal abstractions imposed upon the numinous reality of our organic, acausally-imbued life.
What we have now – manifest in The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and their Magian masters, with their modern tyrannical nation-States – is the result of The White Hordes having: (1) adopted and adapted what became the abstraction of the Nazarene (Magian-derived) way of life; (2) having adopted and adapted the Magian principle of usury; (3) having manufactured from the Nazarene abstraction and from their own other abstractions (such as a codified law and a remote, impersonal, authority, sustained by mandatory taxes) new abstractions; and (3) from them striving to implement, because of and using their innate character, these new abstractions, such as modern “democracy”, the modern nation-State, and the mythical desire for so-called “peace” to be established, of course, by and under the aegis of the armed forces led by or dominated by The White Hordes who have manufactured for themselves a world mandate, courtesy of their creations such as the so-called “United Nations”.
Thus was the rough beast – our mortal enemy – born, to slouch toward Bethlehem, where it helped to bring about the Zionist entity, which entity has come to believe that its messianic hour is almost here, at last.
The Tyrannical Abstraction of The State
One of the fundamental problems of our times in the un-numinous, the tyrannical, the impersonal, abstraction of The State, maintained as this abstraction is by mandatory taxes, by an increasingly bullying Police force which increasingly relies upon surveillance and paid informers, and imbued as this abstraction is with a mechanistic materialism, a capitalistic ethos, and the ever-present threat of individuals being incarcerated in some barbaric prison if they break some law which some servant or servants of The State have manufactured in order to ensure the survival of The State and the survival of those oligarchies who control The State and who benefit from its existence.
The modern State – wherever in the West or in the world it is located – seeks to imbue its citizens with either some sort of abstract national pride (for which it has manufactured a lifeless un-numinous so-called national “culture”) or with a belief in some other abstraction of a political, social, or religious nature, just as it assigns a high priority to other abstractions such as “national security” or “national defence”, and just as it uses all the means at its disposal – from the Media to entertainment to sport to manufactured celebratory events to worthless so-called “traditions” to promises about “change” and “progress” – in an attempt to keep its mostly debt-ridden wage and salary slaves reasonably content, knowing that it needs the taxes it steals and extorts from them in order to maintain its existence, and the existence of the parasites who feed upon it and who benefit from it.
For the modern nation-State is, in truth, a large legalized protection racket, demanding you pay “protection money” or you will be visited by their “heavies” (the Police and the other agencies they control) and then either asked to pay even more protection money (a “fine”) or be imprisoned for however long they deem appropriate in their barbaric prisons, which prisons they maintain as a means of persuasion and control. for the so-called “justice” of the State and its flunkies is an abstract, impersonal, “justice” wholly unrelated to the natural and numinous (and real) justice which derives from personal honour – for their abstract so-called “justice”, and their Police forces and their laws, take away the freedom and the ability of the individual to make their own judgement of others, to be responsible for themselves, and to seek honourable redress in a personal, direct, manner.
What all this amounts to is that The State makes the individual rootless, powerless, and undermines and destroys the connexion of the individual to the numinous, for it destroys that natural, numinous, culture which arises from our natural, tribal, human, way of living. It takes away the ability of the individual to evolve in a natural way, for it replaces the natural perspective of Nature and the Cosmos with the perspective of various lifeless abstractions, all of which abstractions have their own lifeless, un-numinous and ultimately causal and mechanistic goals. Even what passes for “religion” or for a non-material Way in such States is lifeless, un-numinous and ultimately meaningless because it is either an abstraction itself (some -ism, some -ology) or because it demands subservience of the individual to its dogma and does not recognize, promote nor accept either personal empathy or personal honour as a basis for insight and for living.
In contrast, a true numinous way of living is never “religious” and never supra-personal; it is never impersonal and dogmatic, and never demands subservience to some impersonal authority. Instead, a true numinous way of living: (1) always arises from, and is part of, a natural tribal or clan-based community who live, who work, together in some locality and who thus know each other personally or know of, or are related to, the others in such a locality, and (2) always allows for, and indeed often insists upon, the importance of individual empathy, of individual experience, of individual change, never ever thus negating those three most fundamental principles of genuine freedom, of our humanity itself: empathy, personal honour, and a learning from direct personal experience, which personal learning builds noble character and which personal, practical and direct experience is far far more valuable than the abstract impersonal “learning” and the “knowledge” and the “experience” obtained in and enforced by impersonal Institutions and by mandatory State schools.
For the birth of this beast, The State, we have to thank The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and the influence of the Magian ethos, and for the continued existence of this beast and its modern progeny we have to thank the alliance of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and the Magian. However, what began as an alliance has now become, in the last several decades, almost total control of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris by the Magian, and an almost total reliance, by The White Hordes, on not only The State, but also on abstractions, which abstractions now include the new mythos which the Magian and their willing helpers among the White Hordes have developed as one means of control (Footnote 4).
The Downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris
How can we, how should we, deal with this beast, The State, and thus re-establish our connexion to the numinous? First, we have to accept that the peoples of the West – the vast majority of whom are still part of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – will not, and cannot, suddenly change their nature, and what has now become their character, and neither will they, at least not in the next century or so, free themselves from the control of the Magian and from their subservience to The State. For this State still provides them with, and will continue to provide them with, a reasonable materialistic way of life, and the Magian will ensure that the troops and minions of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris will fight for, and/or obtain by whatever means, whatever resources are needed, wherever in the world they are, in order for their lackey Western States, and their own beloved Zionist entity, to survive.
Given all these things, it is reasonable to suggest and expect and to work toward one or both of the following. (1) That the societies of the West have to broken down and disrupted from within by those who understand the perfidy of the abstraction of The State and who desire to live in either a new numinous, and evolutionary, way, or in a way consistent with their own, non-Western, culture or way of life. (2) That those, external to the West, who have suffered most at the hands of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – and who have somehow managed to maintain at least some of their own numinous culture or some of their own ancestral tribal ways, and who may not yet be infected that much by the Magian ethos and the new Magian mythos – should begin to free themselves from Western control and Western influence by practical and/or by “spiritual”/cultural means, which practical means includes the use of armed force, rebellion, and insurrection, and which cultural means include embracing a tribal way of life, ancestral or otherwise.
In both of these, the emphasis needs to be moved away from the traditions, the history, the past culture, the current ethos, of the indigenous peoples of the West (the White “foreign devils”) and instead directed toward either (1) that of other non-Western peoples or (2) toward a new numinous and tribal way of living for peoples of any ethnicity, White and non-White. (Footnote 5)
Thus, it is time for a genuine new beginning, away from the West of today and yesterday. Time for the crimes, the oppression, the tyranny, of the West – of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – to be exposed, to be understood, and for Western ways, values and abstractions to be rejected in favour of the ways, the traditions, the culture, of other peoples and in favour of our new and numinous way. It is time for other peoples to cease to regard and cease to view the West, and The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, as examples to followed and admired, and for the so-called progress and the current prosperity of the West to be understood for what it is: the bloody result of centuries of colonialism; the result of centuries of exploitation of the peoples and resources of the world; the result of centuries of blackmail, extortion, plunder, war, and atrocity after atrocity; the consequence of real holocaust after real holocaust.
Indeed, it is correct to state that the barbarian peoples of the West – despite their sly propaganda to the contrary – are the most blood-thirsty people in human history, having been responsible, during their recent “Second World war” alone, for the killing of over seventy million people, which is equivalent to exterminating more than the whole population of a country such as modern day France. In addition, if one considers the slaughter that the West have been responsible for in the past one hundred and fifty years alone, it is equivalent to exterminating far more than the whole population of a populous country such as modern day Pakistan.
Therefore it is indeed time for Western ways, values and abstractions to be rejected, and for the West itself to be brought down. For the West, with its abstract nation-States, with its White Hordes of Homo Hubris in thrall to the new Magian mythos and fighting for and on behalf of that mythos, is the greatest obstacle to our further evolution; the greatest tyranny to have befallen us in our history, although few among The White Hordes realize this, so brainwashed have they been by the sly propaganda of their nations, and so unaware as they are and have been of true, the evolutionary, purpose of our individual lives. For this modern profane mechanistic materialistic tyranny has taken away from us our numinous tribal ways, taken away our numinous living culture, our empathy, and our personal honour: our freedom to live numinously.
Furthermore, the foundation, the basis, the essence, of the change required to bring about the downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and their nation-States, is the change toward creating new communities; the change toward new tribes and tribal ways of living, whether these are urban based or rural, and whether or not – in the case of non-Western lands – these are based on or inspired by surviving traditions and surviving ancestral ways. That is, there is and must be a rejection of the abstraction of The State itself, and a desire to embrace the natural, the numinous way, of tribes and clans. The way of the tribe is the way of the future; the way toward a conscious and a continuing evolution, while the way of The State is the way of restriction, of tyranny, of impersonal control.
Hence, the downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – and of their most perfidious abstraction, the nation-State – begins with peoples external to the West, and with those of non-White ethnicity within the lands of the West. That is, it is time for the non-White peoples of the world to free themselves from the power, the influence, the control, the abstractions, the ethos, of The White Hordes, and to assert themselves; to reject the nation-State in favour of tribes; to either rediscover their own ethos, their ancestral ways, or to develope for themselves new ways, a new ethos, independent from all the un-numinous abstractions of The White Hordes.
In conclusion, the change, the evolution, that we seek to bring about is a natural one; an evolutionary return to what is numinous; a restoration of the balance that has been lost, and this is, in essence, a return to a tribal way of life, a return to and a development of empathy, and a return to the law of personal honour in place of the abstract law of The White Hordes and of the Magian.
This is an evolutionary return because it derives from a knowledge and understanding of the perfidy of abstractions – and especially the perfidy of The State and of conventional religions – and from a knowledge and understanding of ourselves as a nexion. That is, it is based on an appreciation and awareness of the numinous, and is a conscious choice to change ourselves in a natural and numinous way. It is evolutionary because there is no desire to tro to re-create some idealized past or some mythical past way of living, tribal or otherwise. Instead, there is a striving to evolve, to become part of, to bring-into-being, new tribes, to form new communities from these new tribes, and to allow the development of new and numinous and vibrant cultures from these new communities.
Then – having awoken from the abstractive illusions that currently hold most people in a dream-like sleep – we can evolve, change, and develope; we will cease to be children, and instead become mature human beings who can leave their childhood home, this planet we call Earth, evolving thus to become an entirely new species of being.
David Myatt
Notes:
(1) For a general description of Homo Hubris, see (a) Homo Hubris and the Disruption of The Numinous and (b) The Ethos of Vindex In Historical Context (Part Two of The Mythos of Vindex)
(2) A good example of their type of character is the figure of Alexander of Macedon, who was ruthless, cunning, ambitious, vain, arrogant, restless, insolent, who believed himself to have a “Destiny”, and who set about disrupting the ways of life of other peoples, and imposing his own way upon those he conquered, thus destroying their tribal ways and thus upsetting the natural balance which those peoples had attained over long periods of time. In place of their ancestral tribal ways – which maintained for them a connexion to the Numinous – he imposed his own lifeless abstractions.
In describing the nature and character and thus the personality, the persona, of the collective White Hordes, we are, of course, generalizing, based as this generalization is upon a study of the history of the old Europe, and upon the deeds committed by the collective White Hordes in the past thousand years, including their colonialism.
Since it is a generalization, some or indeed many individuals belonging to, or deemed to be belong to, The White Hordes may have a character, a nature, a persona, different from, or even quite distinct from, that of the collective White Hordes themselves.
(3) Communism – and all forms of political socialism – are just more un-numinous abstractions manufactured by The White Hordes and by the Magian, with all or most of these forms requiring some State for them to be, in theory, implemented or tried. Similarly, all forms of modern democracy are un-numinous abstractions and most if not all also require some State for them to be implemented or tried.
Thus, all these forms, all these abstractions – like capitalism and fascism and all conventional religions – do not and never can liberate the individual or a people and return them to a numinous way of life, but instead only serve to enslave them further to un-numinous abstractions.
(4) This new Magian manufactured mythos slyly combines several elements. The first element is the almost mythical belief that the so-called “West” (and especially America) is a bastion of “reason, justice, and freedom”; that “democracy” means “freedom and peace”; and that those who do or who may oppose the nation-States of the West (for whatever reason) are “enemies of freedom, and enemies of reason and democracy”. The second element is that the way to prosperity and “freedom” and happiness lies in accepting the values, the ways, the abstractions, of the West, such as “democracy” and usury. The third element is that the Western created “United Nations” – over which the West maintains control by means of the so-called Security Council – has a mandate to intervene in the affairs of any country, by force if necessary; impose punitive sanctions, and is generally “keeping the peace”, although of course this so-called “peace” is really submission. The fourth element is that the West – and whatever allies it deems suitable (such as the Zionist entity) – has a right, and even a duty, to possess vastly superior weapons, including nuclear weapons, which it can and which it should deny to whomsoever it chooses, so that its military power can never, ever, be challenged by conventional means.
The fifth element – and perhaps the most sly element – of the new Magian mythos is the one that binds all the others together, and this is that the West, and those chosen to be their allies, have in the last hundred years fought and won several hard, difficult, wars for their “freedom” and their “rights”, which “wars for freedom” most importantly include what is called The Second World War, where the forces of “good” (the West, their allies and friends, including the Magian) narrowly defeated the forces of “evil” (the German National-Socialists and the warriors of Nippon) with the German National-Socialists accused of being responsible for the worst atrocity in human history (the so-called Shoah) and which so-called atrocity led to the necessary establishment of the Zionist entity, which entity should therefore be supported at whatever cost, and is itself a bastion of democracy and freedom.
The final element of the new Magian mythos is the belief that the West must defend itself, “whatever the cost”; that threats to “freedom” exist now or will exist; that the security of Western nations and of their allies are vital to freedom itself, and that its people should be and are expected to make sacrifices to ensure “our continuing freedom” even if this means going to fight in some war somewhere, or supporting whatever Western security organizations do and whatever laws governments may manufacture to “protect their freedom and their national security”.
Most if not all the peoples of the West accept and believe in most if not all of this modern mythos.
(5) Basically, the White peoples of the West need to cure themselves of their addiction to, and their desire to manufacture, abstractions, as they need to reform their own character by developing empathy, by re-engaging with and respecting the numinous, and by returning to and embracing the individual way of individual honour. Fundamentally, they need to reject the abstractions of the nation-State, of conventional “religions” and the causality of all “politics”, and instead embrace a new and tribal way of living.
Thus, it is not a question of ethnicity or of ethnic conflict – but rather the opposite; bringing-into-being in the West new ethnically diverse tribes. It is a question of all peoples – but especially the White peoples of the West – rejecting lifeless abstractions and adopting instead numinous ways based upon a new tribal way of life.
Prisons are barbaric because they all treat individuals in an uncivilized, a dishonourable, way. This society, like all other Western societies and indeed all societies in the world, accepts Prisons, and regards them as necessary.
Prisons are inhuman because they use the tactics of the cowardly bully; that is, they are based upon the law of the bully: those who have power (the Prison guards, the Prison officials such as the Governor) demand that prisoners do what they are told or they will suffer. And those in power have the right, the authority, to use whatever force they deem necessary to enforce their will. Thus, if someone does not “behave” and do as they are told and live in the degrading way which all Prisons demand, then they can be physically subdued, thrown into a special punishment cell, and punished by being given a longer prison sentence. Quite often, such troublesome inmates are physically attacked by the guards: “to teach them a lesson and show them who is the boss”. This is ignoble; it is barbaric.
Successive governments have accepted and condoned this barbarism, this institutional bullying. In the so-called “democratic” countries of the West, this bullying is most often a moral type of blackmail: “Do what we say and you will be released from Prison early. Disobey us, and we will keep you in Prison for longer.” But even in these countries there is often real bullying, real physical intimidation of inmates, by both guards and fellow prisoners.
Prison is an affront to human dignity; it is denial of the most fundamental rights of a human being. Prisons treat people like animals: caging them; punishing those who “misbehave” and rewarding those who do what they are told. The system only works because the inmates know that they are powerless: any attempt at rebellion will be swiftly put down by extreme, brutal and if necessary lethal force, as has happened many times in the past. So the inmates are cowered into submission, into accepting, year after year after year, the degrading way of life which exists in all Prisons.
The conditions inside modern Prisons in our society may be better than in the past – plentiful food, warmth and so on – but otherwise Prisons are still barbaric, primitive institutions based upon the law of the bully and dedicated to enforcing the dictates, the authority, of the government of the day. Prisons have made bullying into an art.
Primative Retribution verses Civilized Change
Whatever a person has done – or is alleged to have done – nothing justifies this institutionalized bullying, this inhuman, degrading treatment.
No society which accepts and condones Prisons can call itself a civilized society. It is uncivilized, inhuman, for a society to accept and condone the concept, the idea, of forcefully punishing a person for doing what that society has made “illegal” through some law or laws. The whole concept, the idea, of some government, some Institution, exacting “retribution” from a person by confining them to Prison is uncivilized.
No words are too strong to condemn the idea of Prison, and the barbaric system of retribution, of “criminal law”, which underlies all modern societies. For these societies are based upon the primitive uncivilized idea that people cannot fundamentally change, and should seldom if ever be given a “second chance”.
The civilized way, the human way – the way of Folk Culture – is for those found guilty of some wrongful deed to be given a choice between: (1) making amends in some way, through voluntary work in the community or through compensating their victims or victims financially, which may involve the offender working in a job for a set period and giving most of their earnings to the victim or victims; (2) exile, that is, through leaving the society and making a new life for themselves somewhere else.
That is, the civilized way, the human way, is to respect the dignity of the person, whatever that person has done or is alleged to have done: to still allow them a choice; to still allow them to be free; and most important of all to allow for them to change themselves for the better through honest hard work.
The very foundation of civilized life is freedom: the ability of the individual to be free, to have a choice; to be able to decide their own fate. And it is this freedom, and the honour and dignity which goes with it, that society has taken away with its primitive idea of punitive punishment, of primative retribution, and its primitive institution of Prison.
It must be repeated: Whatever a person has done – or is alleged to have done – nothing justifies this institutionalized bullying, this inhuman, degrading treatment.
What is uncivilized is to deprive an individual of their freedom, for however short a time: to force them, either physically through superior force, or morally through moral blackmail, to do as they are told.
What is uncivilized is to forcefully restrain a person: to fetter them in any way, through handcuffs, or chains, or any form of restraint, including the use of “medicines”. To do this, is to treat a human being like an animal: it is to deny their human status.
Such a use of force, such a taking away of the liberty of the individual, is barbaric.
The Modern Idea of Rehabilitation of Offenders
Of course, most modern societies have tried in some ways to move toward the “rehabilitation of offenders” but this is mostly done within the Prison system. That is, the bullying, undignified way of life of Prisons is still the basis for dealing with offenders. All that has been done is to try and give those in Prison some training, some skills, so that when they are released, they may stand a better chance of getting a job.
The fundamental way of dealing with offenders is still the same as it was: the severe punishment of removing them from society, from their family and friends, and condemning them to live as caged animals. Well fed, and sometimes “well treated” by their guards, but nonetheless still caged like animals, and still treated according to the law of the bully.
The Civilized Way of Exile
Some people cannot or do not wish to change, as some people may not initially benefit from being given a second chance. The civilized way to deal with such people – that is, with those who have not benefited from having to work to recompense their victim or victims, and/or who continue to re-offend – is to exile them; to remove them from society and thus make them into “outlaws”.
The problem with this, in this modern world, is that there are now few, if any, areas where people can be exiled to, or where such outlaws could go. Few, if any, nations in the world today would accept such exiles. There are few, if any, opportunities today for such exiles to start a new life, to make something out of themselves.
That this is so is a sad reflection on the modern world: on its lack of humanity, based as this lack of humanity is on a primitive, uncivilized, irrational, view of human nature itself.
To be civilized is to be optimistic about human nature: to accept that most people, given the right circumstances, and the opportunity, can change themselves for the better. To be civilized is to accept that there are few really bad people in this world, and that most people who offend some law or other, can change for the better, can contribute in a positive way, given the right circumstances, the right opportunity, and most importantly given the right difficulties to overcome.
The civilized way is to allow for such a change in people: to give them a chance, and present them with challenges and difficulties, for most human beings, when faced with problems, with great difficulties, with great challenges – whatever their past deeds – will rise to the challenge.
Lacking vast, underpopulated, ungoverned, undiscovered, pioneering areas and territories – which would provide the opportunities, the difficulties exiles needed to change – the civilized thing to do is for nations to get together and establish some area, some territory, where exiles can go to and live. Or failing this, for one nation, opting to live in a civilized way and so abolish its Prisons, to set aside an area of its own territory for such exiles: where those exiled can freely live and which that nation has declared to be “outside the law”, with there being an established and guarded border.
Bad by Nature
Of course, even given such opportunities as this, given such places of exile as these, there will probably always be a few individuals who by nature are bad and who will never change.
How to deal will this small minority? Such really bad people – who have not been reformed through honest hard work – will be exiled, and having been exiled, will be free to prey upon other exiles: free to do bad and possibly terrible things. But such bad people will always be exiled as individuals; they will arrive in the outlaw territory by themselves, and given the fact that these bad people will be in a minority even in such outlaw territory, they will have to face others who are not so bad as them and who will not be prepared to be bullied or intimidated by such people.
What is important about exile, about an outlaw country – a place where there is no established law – is that individuals have the freedom, and the ability, to defend themselves. That is, that the only law in such places is the law of personal honour: people are responsible for themselves. They have the freedom to act: to determine their own future.
Naturally, they may well be gangs of bad people formed, or gangs led by a bad person, who will prey upon other exiles. But it is up to these other exiles to deal with this, through defending themselves. They will at least have the opportunity, the freedom, to do this, and may well seek other people like themselves, and so join together to fight these bad gangs. History is replete with such examples: indeed, the creation of civilization itself arose from such conflict, from free men and women, fundamentally good in nature, getting together to take on those who were bad in nature or being led by someone who was bad.
The knowledge of such things as this in such outlaw territories will be sufficient reason for some offenders – given the choice of exile – to decide against exile, just as it will make others, both bad in nature and good in nature, willingly take or accept such exile.
In a sense, such bad people as will exist in such outlaw lands will be dealt with by Nature: by the natural process of growth, of change; by the natural processes, the natural laws, which exist and have always existed.
New Communities
What will happen over time in such outlaw territories is that a balance will be attained between those who have made something of themselves, and changed for the better, and those who are and who will remain, bad in nature, with there being “wild” areas controlled by these bad people, and areas controlled by those who wish to live with some kind of “law and order”.
It may well be that, over time, those who have changed will want to control in some way those who live in such uncontrolled areas, and so desire to bring their own new laws into these “wild areas”.
So it may well be that a new community is one day born in the outlaw territory, with its own identity, its own unique way of life, its own character, thus beginning a new episode in the saga of our human history, of our continuing change and evolution. For this new society may and should wish to continue the human way of living, and so desire to create its own area where it can send its own exiles…..
This natural, organic, civilized change and human progress can and should go on, century after century. One day in the not too distant future, we should establish our first colonies on other worlds – perhaps at first on the planet Mars, and then later on, on some planet orbiting some far distant star. The way of exile is the way such colonies can grow: the way we as a species can and should continue growing; the way we can and should produce new cultures, new nations, new diversity.
Understood in this way, the way of the present – of Prisons, of bullying – is incredibly wasteful of our human potential, condemning us as it does to living in a primitive, inhuman, way.
In contrast to the present, the way of exile, of reform, is our opportunity to act like human beings: an opportunity to treat others in a human way, as well as an opportunity to continue the saga of our human evolution.
David Myatt
c. 1998 CE
Homo Hubris and the Disruption of The Numinous
The Genesis of Homo Hubris
Homo Hubris is the name given to that new sub-species of the genus Homo which has, in the last three hundred or so years, become the dominant species inhabiting the industrialized countries of what is called “the West”.
The genesis of Homo Hubris lies in the rise of abstract concepts such as that of national-identity – over and above regional, tribal, differences and local (“clan”) identity – which began to emerge in Europe, and especially in Britain, some time before what has been termed “the Industrial Revolution”. This concept of a national, somewhat impersonal and always abstract, national identity, is prefigured, for example, in the speech by Queen Elizabeth the First of England, given at Tilbury, in 1588 CE, and in the dramatised speech, on St. Crispin’s Day, given by Shakespeare to King Henry V in the play (c. 1599 CE) of the same name, where the “nation” of England is eulogized. A more overt expression of this particular abstraction is the Commonwealth of England, established by Oliver Cromwell in 1653 CE, which in many ways was the forerunner of the modern concepts, the modern abstractions, of nation and State theorized by people such as Hegel and Fichte and brought into being after the French Revolution.
It was, however, what has been called “the Industrial Revolution” – which began in the early to middle 1700’s (CE) – which led to the rapid growth and spread of this new mostly urban-dwelling sub-species, Homo Hubris, in thrall to, and manipulated by others with, such abstract notions as “the nation” and “the State”.
Homo Hubris, by nature, is naturally rapacious, and rather war-like, and can often be distinguished from Homo Sapiens Galacticus by their profane “lack of numinous balance” (that is, their lack of empathy), by a lack of knowing of and feeling for the numinous; by a personal arrogance, by a lack of manners, and by that lack of respect for anything other than strength/power and/or their own gratification. One particular feature of the life of Homo Hubris is their dependence upon, and their need and often respect for, machines and technology, which machines and which technology have at best disrupted our balance with the Numinous, and, at worst, have severed our connexion to the Numinous and thus to Nature.
In outward appearance, Homo Hubris – that denizen of the Western megalopolis – is often distinguished by their lack of ancestral costume or genuine cultural apparel. Instead, they almost always either: (1) garb themselves in mass-produced products of consumerism (which more often than not sport some manufacturing logo or some manufacturing name, making them walking advertisements for such consumerism), or (2) garb themselves in what they regard, or have been informed (by some arm of the modern mass Media) is “trendy” or “fashionable”; or (3) garb themselves in the apparel, the outfit, of some modern urban abstract and un-numinous “sub-culture” which they identify with, which sub-cultures interestingly include the modern Armed Forces of the West, with their anonymizing uniforms.
The majority of Homo Hubris dress thus because essentially they have no personal, individual, style and generally possess a herd-like mentality, being unwilling and/or unable to be different from their pees, or “their mates”, or their friends, or their colleagues. Thus, even when some of them regard themselves as being “rebellious” they are more often than not outfitting themselves (outwardly and often inwardly) according to some “trend” or some passing “craze”, which “trend” or which “craze” are always urban-based, always disconnected from the realness of their own ancestral culture (which ancestral cultures are always rural) and which outward signs of “rebellion” almost always become commercialized, given time.
This outward appearance of Homo Hubris may be said to be an outward sign of their true inner nature, for it is in the nature of Homo Hubris to conform, and to belong to that-which is un-numinous and which lacks a feeling for that natural and dignified humility born from personal experience and/or an innate empathy and sense of honour. Their conformity is most often to some abstraction; to some-thing – such as an idea, a dogma, a creed, an ideology – manufactured by someone else or by some established Institution.
Thus, Homo Hubris is essentially rootless, and prideful. Their “home” is what they make for themselves, and/or for their own family, and this home can be anywhere, for it does not really matter to them where they dwell; and more often than not their sense of belonging, if they have one, is to some modern abstraction, such as some modern nation-State, or to some religion, or to some -ology or some -ism, or to some un-numinous idealized urban place, such as some city or some large national region where they were born, which region is almost always denuded of real tradition and real rural living and culture, and more often than not has been manufactured in some past by some government functionary or some committee and made “real” by some abstract law of some abstract nation-State.
The individuals of Homo Hubris have little or no genuine ancestral culture; nothing that ties them to a real, living (and thus small), ancestral homeland; no sense of belonging to a specific local place or rural area which they have a natural empathy and love for and which they personally know through dwelling there for a length of time of many years. They have no feeling for, and little or no practical experience of, the natural Time – the natural rhythm and cycle – of Nature, but instead only have experience of the abstract measured out causal and urban Time of “clocks”. They have little or no awe of and respect for Nature: of their own smallness and impotence compared to the power and longevity and fecundity of Nature; instead, they exhibit that innate prideful and arrogant attitude of Homo Hubris where they believe or feel – because of some machine, or because of some technology or because of some abstract idea or some ideology or some dogma – that they are “powerful”, or “important”, or have some “Destiny” or can “make some difference” or, worse, that they must and should and can “change things for the better” according to some idea, some ideology, some dogma or some -ism.
They have little or no experience of the slowness and the numinosity of regular manual toil or of manufacturing things using only their hands and hand-tools. Instead, they only have experience of using powered machinery and powered machines which serve to distance them from the materials they are using or which they use to manufacture something which someone else wants or desires or which someone or some oligarchy or some product of capitalism has decreed is necessary for “change”, or for “progress” or from which someone somewhere can make a profit.
They have little or none of that genuine learning and personal knowledge that arises slowly from direct practical personal experience extending over many years and from extended contact with those of a previous generation who have practical skills and practical knowledge to impart, individually, in a natural and slow way. Instead, their knowledge and their learning are abstract, learnt in groups in classrooms or in lecture-rooms or from books or other material published by others, or, now, from the Internet (See Footnote 1) – and is almost always of no immediate, and pressing, relevance to themselves. That is, knowledge, learning, have not grown out, slowly, from within they themselves, and are not rooted in a numinous locale, in an area where they belong by virtue of ancestry and culture and toil. Instead, such knowledge and such learning as they possess are abstract, and have been imposed upon them, by some Institution, or some nation-State, or which they have imposed upon themselves because of some abstract interest or some enthusiasm or because it will help them “get on in life” and enable them to earn more money by toiling in some abstract profession or in some industry or some concern connected to some modern-State or some megalopolis.
In essence, therefore, the fundamental distinction is between: (1) a living, rural and ancestral way of life – which living (and which culture arising from it) always derive from some dwelling in a certain small area by some tribes or some clans – and (2) the artificial, manufactured, living of Homo Hubris: the living exemplified by industrialized cities and towns which towns and cities are now part of some large nation-State.
In the former, there is a knowing of and a respect for Nature, born from personal experience and the often harsh nature of a rural working life, which working life is one of reliance upon hand-crafts, hand-tools and the work of animals.
In the latter, there is a prideful ignorance of and a disrespect for Nature – except, perchance, when Nature touches some individual, bringing thus some misfortune – and a reliance upon powerful machines and machine-driven tools and technology, which powerful machines and machine-driven tools and which technology enable individuals to rapaciously and arrogantly destroy Nature and to rapaciously and arrogantly manufacture and build what is lifeless and abstract and barbaric, inhuman, and urbanized.
Machines, Technology, and The Disruption of The Numinous
Fundamentally, all machines and machine-driven tools – those things which extend the power, the reach, the ability, of a single individual beyond that which they could do, by themselves, during a day of work, with or without the help of other living-beings, such as horses or oxen – usurp the Numinous. That is, they possess the potential to: (1) re-inforce and extend the natural pride and natural arrogance and natural hubris of human beings; and (2) distance the user from Nature and that natural rhythm and natural way of life which encourages empathy and from which genuine (numinous) culture arises. Technology takes this usurpation of the Numinous even further.
However, what is wrong, what is un-numinous and un-ethical, are not such manufactured machines, tools, and technology, per se, but rather, the use to which they have been put, by human beings. Let us consider, for instance, two examples: the automobile, and the agricultural tractor.
1) The automobile – or hubrismobile – has profoundly changed the way of life of not only the countries of the West, but of most of the world. This machine – and similar machines, such as the railway engine – has made travel easy, and often affordable. With the building of roads, and bridges, previously inaccessible areas have been opened up, and developed. A journey that might have taken months on foot, or weeks by horse, could be accomplished in far, far, less “time” and without the rigours and difficulties previously encountered. Isolated communities have been “connected” to towns and cities; and people no longer had to live near where they worked, for they could “commute”, by hubrismobile, by train, by omnibus. People from the cities and the towns could, without much difficulty, swarm into and “enjoy” the countryside, and seek out ever more “remote” places where they, without much effort, could indulge in “leisure activities and pastimes”.
Modern-nations – their people just as much as their governments – enthusiastically embraced these, and associated, new machines. The result has been devastating for rural, isolated, often clannish, communities, their way of life and their culture. Furthermore, the hubrismobile – and similar machines – has distanced modern human beings even further from the realness of Nature and from that slow, natural and necessary toiling effort that walking and riding provided, and which effort enabled the cultivation of empathy and that attitude to life from whence true numinous culture arises. That is, things have been made “too easy” and too disconnected from their realness, from their natural place of dwelling, and as a consequence the haste and the profanity and arrogance of the city and the town have spread, displacing the slowness and toil of walking, the symbiosis required to work with and ride a horse, which slowness, toil and symbiosis engendered a certain numinous attitude to life, a certain natural respect and thence a real human dignity. And it is dignity which is so woefully lacking in Homo Hubris.
2) The agricultural tractor – and associated agricultural machines – have transformed agriculture, leading to the decimation of small diversified family farms, loss of work for farm labourers, and to increasingly large “agri-businesses” which specialize in one, or perhaps, two crops, and which crops are grown for profit and resale and not for the consumption of those growing and tending them.
That is, the emphasis has shifted totally away from small family owned farms whose diversified crops and stock were produced and reared for the consumption of the farmer and his family, with whatever surplus, if any, being sold locally for usually a very small amount of money, or bartered for needed items. Instead, there is now the cult of mono-culture and the agri-business (often employing only a few people and cultivating hundreds if not thousands of acres) which depend on making enough profit to buy and keep (often through usurious loans) the expensive farm machinery required to run such concerns, and which profit motive has required the use of fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and genetically engineered crops, to artificially increase yields. The result – in places such as rural English counties – has been devastating for both Nature and for the rural way of life, and while it is true that such a machine as a small agricultural tractor can and often has made farming easier on the individual undertaking such work, it has led to unchecked and un-numinous change, and to the spread of the arrogance and the ways of Homo Hubris.
An example may illustrate this. This example concerns a village in a rural English county; what it once was, and what it is now. Less than a hundred years ago, this village was a small collection of cottages and farms. The farms themselves contained apple and pear orchards, and many fields of various crops. These crops had been found to be suitable to the type of soil in the area, and each year several fields were left “fallow” so that the fertility of the soil could be regained following a harvest. Naturally, given the orchards, the village and the surrounding area produced cider and perry – with every farm making its own. Indeed, cider was the regular and preferred drink in those days when the water itself was often suspect, and before tea drinking became common and affordable. The surplus crops, when harvested, were taken to the nearby small town, where there was a thriving market. At this time, most of the villagers worked either on the land itself, or in trades or crafts connected with them. For example, there was a village farrier, and a wheelwright, and thus a relative and local self-sufficiency, for most things the village, the farms, needed for their daily life were made of wood, locally cut, shaped, and crafted: carts, fences, gates, doors, even pumps. And what was not so made and crafted of wood, was more often than not made by the local blacksmith, or of stone quarried from somewhere nearby.
There was a sense of identity among the villagers – they were, for the most part, proud to be from the area, and proud of their local ancestry.
Of course, it is easy to idealize such village life. But there was an awareness of and a real sense of belonging. Life, for most of the villagers, was often harsh, sometimes cruel. But there was real individual and local character in the people. There was a real, living, community which, despite the hardship – or perhaps more correctly because of the hardship - slowly prospered over the centuries. There was a real balance with Nature – with the seasons, and the soil for the most part understood and respected, partly because old ways of doing things were carried on, with these old, ancestral ways having been found to be effective. (See Footnote 2.)
Today, however, in this village, this balance, this understanding and this respect for Nature no longer exist, even on the two farms which still remain. The village itself has grown tremendously. Over three score new houses have been built on land once owned by two of the farms. Dozens of trees have gone, and scores of hedges removed, to make way for these new arrivals. One of the other farms is no longer a “working farm” – it is occupied by a “townie” family, and its Barns have been converted into houses, lived in by other “townies” who commute to the nearby city in their cars. The orchards themselves have gone (save for some apple trees in the garden of one of the farms on the edge of the village) as have the fields of crops. Nearly all the fields now grow the regulation wheat, in large fields made by removing boundary hedges so that machines can plant, cultivate and harvest more. And the tragedy is that this wheat often ends up stored in an enormous warehouse where it forms a tiny part of the great and never used European “wheat mountain”.
Furthermore, even the few farmers who remain seem to have lost their respect for and understanding of Nature, ploughing as they do almost to the hedgerow, spraying the fields as they do with dangerous chemicals, and tearing the heart out of their remaining life-sheltering hedges as they do when they recklessly flail away at the wrong times of year with mechanical flails: stripping the berries and buds off in Autumn and decimating the surviving buds in early Spring. Farming has become a business at worst, and at best an occupation. No longer is the land farmed to provide food for the people who farm, with the excess produce being traded for essential items. No longer is there an understanding of husbanding the soil: of caring for it, treasuring it, for the benefit of future generations.
Nearly all of the new villagers work in the nearby city and the nearby towns. They have little knowledge of, and even less understanding of, Nature and the land around them shielded as they are by their centrally-heated, electric-light houses with its running water and flushing lavatories, and conveyed as they are from place to place by their heated, rain-shielding hubrismobiles. To such people, the place where they live is really irrelevant, as long as it is convenient. One of the few remaining attractions of the village is its lack of street lighting, on even the new estates of intruding houses. Thus can the beauty of the stars still be seen, at night, as there can still be a feeling of rural isolation in the darkness. But of course, the majority of people find this darkness – this intrusion of Nature – dreadfully “inconvenient” and have petitioned the local Council to install street lighting, which doubtless the unfeeling townie technocrats will, in time. Meanwhile, many of these village residents have installed intrusive high-power “security” lights on their houses, so keen are they to dispel anything which is natural, and fearful as they have become due to recent spates of burglaries, often by louts from nearby cities and towns who, of course, have easy access to such “rural” places by means of their hubrismobiles.
In particular, the lives of these new “village-dwelling” people are not connected to Nature: they do not depend on Nature, on the soil, the land, around them. Instead, their living depends on the business, the industry, the commerce, of the towns and cities, with such business, such industry, such commerce being for the most part unnecessary and unnatural, existing only to provide more and more unnecessary luxuries and goods, or existing only to implement abstract political and social policies totally unconnected with the land, and the way and traditions of their ancestors.
The truth is that we still are, and have been, too immature, as a species, to use machines and technology wisely; we have let ourselves be overcome with the power, with the capacity for change, with the pleasure and the ease, that they have imbued us with, just as we have forgotten the natural wisdom that we are and should be toiling, working, human beings who, through the natural toil of our work with our hands or with the aid of other living-beings, such as horses with whom we form a symbiotic relationship, can achieve, can establish and can maintain, a natural and a numinous balance with ourselves, with Nature, and with the community where we dwell. We have forgotten that such a simple rural life, such a way of living, does not need to be harsh if we exist in balance – if we co-operate with – others local to us in an empathic and honourable way for our mutual benefit and for our local needs, accepting that we need a little, but not too much, and eschewing out of choice a life of material wealth and luxury, preferring instead a less materialistic, but more satisfying, numinous way.
Machines, and technology, have undermined and then destroyed this balance, and as a result we have now all but lost our natural connexion to Nature, to other human beings, to other life, as we have lost that natural, slow, rural local way of self-sufficient living which slowly grew, century after century.
Machines, and technology, and the abstractions and artificial goals of modern nation-States and modern ways of material living have grossly allowed us to place profit before individuals, and luxury and personal greed before a natural balance with Nature, a natural balance with ourselves, and with the place where we dwell.
Machines, and technology, and the abstractions and artificial goals of modern nation-States and modern ways of material living have done almost irreparable damage to Nature and to our very humanity. One man with just one machine can now decimate and almost effortlessly destroy in one day acres upon acres of living countryside, of a centuries-old forest, just as one pilot flying one aircraft can in a few seconds, and effortlessly, fire and drop missiles and bombs enough to kill and maim hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, of human beings.
That is, machines and technology have made us more arrogant, more prideful, and far more inhuman than we ever have been, as they have given us the capacity to be far more barbarian than our so-called “barbarian” ancestors, which barbarity we have, in the past hundred years, shamefully and zealously embraced, as witness the hundreds of millions of people that we have killed, injured and maimed, in our wars and our conflicts these past hundred years, which wars and which conflicts used and use a multitude of murderous weapons and in which wars and conflicts our much vaunted modern technology plays an increasing role.
Allied to the use, and important for the spread and acceptance, of machines and technology, has been the abstract idea of “progress”, which particular abstraction is, along with the abstract concept of the modern, and now increasingly tyrannical, nation-State, one of the most profane and destructive and un-numinous abstractions ever manufactured.
The Destructive Abstraction of Progress
The modern Western abstraction (idea) of progress is inseparably bound up with: (1) a desire for and a belief in “change”and continued “growth”; (2) with the belief that we human beings can and should set ourselves abstract goals, unrelated to anything natural or numinous, and strive to achieve these goals; (3) with the belief that such “change”, such “growth”, and such goals will enable us to achieve such things as “happiness”, “wealth”, “contentment”, “freedom”, and so on etcetera; and (4) with the belief that we can manufacture various “things” (abstractions) – such as, for example, a State, an economy, some laws, some government policy or planning – which will lead us toward the attainment of the aforementioned “happiness”, “wealth”, “contentment”, “freedom”, “equality”, and so on etcetera. For instance, Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Marx’s Das Kapital, and Comte’s Système de politique positive, contain all of these concepts, in greater or lesser degree, concepts eulogized by individuals such as John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer.
Furthermore, one of the fundamental tenets of the Zeitgeist of the modern West is that machines, technology and science can aid, ensure and even achieve the abstract progress that is desired, and that some new “invention” will enable us to make even more “progress”.
All these concepts – like all abstractions – usurp or limit or constrain our own individual judgement, which individual judgement – to be numinous and thus ethical – should and must be based upon empathy, that is, upon: (1) a direct and personal knowing of other individuals, of other life, and of Nature; and/or upon (2) a dwelling in a particular area or locality which we directly know, and have experience of, and where such changes as are made, are undertaken by us or others dwelling there in a natural harmonious way with as little disruption, with a genuine respect for the locality and Nature, and in the knowledge that we are but one small and transitory emanation of Nature. All abstractions distort or destroy our correct, and of necessity our individual, perception of other human beings, and of Nature.
In essence. the abstraction of “progress” disrupts, undermines, decimates, and then destroys our natural connexion to Nature, to other individuals, to our past, and to the Cosmos. For instance, this abstraction of so-called “progress” often or mostly requires or involves the rejection of the old, tried, tested ways of the past, which ways have slowly evolved in a natural manner from personal and local experience. In their place, there is some new fangled idea or some new theory or some new, “more progressive”, more “enlightened” way of doing things, all of which derive from somewhere other than direct local experience and local personal knowledge, and all of which disrupt or severe our numinous connexion with our ancestral past, with others, and with Nature.
For instance, this abstraction of so-called “progress” replaces the slow rhythm of Nature’s own Time with the abstract “Time” of some abstraction, such as “achieving prosperity and material success” through change and growth, be this individual, regional or national. Thus, and for example, in the name of such material achievement and prosperity, industrial, or commercial, or retail, or some other type of, development is undertaken, and justified as being “of benefit to the people” and a sign of “commitment to the future”, which development and its associated infrastructure almost always disrupts, displaces, or destroys some aspect of Nature, and often encroaches upon, or undermines, or displaces or destroys, small rural, and often locally self-sufficient, community or communities, with the peoples of such communities then becoming dependant upon or part of the new (often local or national government planned) developments and their infrastructure, effectively making them rootless and severing what was often an ancient connexion with Nature and an ancestral way of living.
Thus is the abstraction of so-called “progress” – and the concomitant change and disruption – either imposed upon individuals, by some abstract entity such as a government, or individuals mistakenly impose it upon themselves, singularly, or in collaboration with others, believing that it is “necessary”, or that some other concept, said to make such progress achievable, will improve or otherwise enhance their own life.
However, the numinous reality is that true “progress”, true and numinous change, is only and ever individual and only ever arises – like wisdom – slowly in a natural way, and only “exists” as a greater presencing of the numinous, a reconnexion of ourselves with The Numen, and an enhancement, and evolution of, that connexion. That is. genuine progress – that which is real because it is not a human-manufactured abstraction we have imposed upon ourselves and upon life – cannot be created or achieved by anything other than an inner change within an individual; by the natural evolution of the individual; or by those small, local, and incremental and generally non-disruptive outer changes (for example to our locality) that work with, and which balance, and which continue, what already-is, based as such small and local changes are on the respect for such natural balance that arises from a knowledge that we are but one small and transitory emanation of, and thus a connexion to, Nature.
Conclusion
What, therefore, are the numinous solutions to the problems of the destructive abstraction of “progress” and of the disruption of the numinous caused by machines and technology? What is the numinous way to proceed to restore the natural balance that Homo Hubris has upset?
The solution – the way – is to return to a more rural, less materialistic, more clan-based, way of living. To return to the slow and natural toil of manual labour and a working in harmony with animals. It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to honourably co-operate with others who feel as we do in order to slowly bring-into-being new rural and clan-based communities where we can live such a way that our natural balance with ourselves, with Nature, is restored.
It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to restrain and control ourselves, and control our lust for comfort and for luxury, and to place empathy with and compassion for all Life at the centre of our own lives. It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to distance ourselves, internally and externally, from the profane, materialistic, egotistic, profit worshipping, machine-worshipping, societies of our age. It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to appreciate, understand and know our place in Nature and in the Cosmos: as but one small nexion of life, which small nexion affects all other living beings and which small nexion has the opportunity to evolve to be the awareness, to be part of the-being, of Nature and of the Cosmos itself.
It is, in summary, the decision to restore, and to then enhance and to evolve, that connexion to the Numinous which machines, and technology, and the abstractions and artificial goals of modern nation-States and modern ways of material living, have severed, and which connexion has its foundation, in genesis, in empathy, in personal honour and in those small clan-based communities where such empathy and such honour can thrive.
David Myatt
Footnotes:
(1) The Internet itself provides an excellent example of (a) the mis-use of technology by Homo Hubris, and (b) of how such technology enhances the profanity and arrogance of Homo Hubris, and disrupts the Numinous itself.
Genuine learning and a genuine wisdom arises from a reflexion born from personal, direct, practical experience: from an alchemical, inner, symbiosis; from that personal and very individual growth that requires a long period of causal time, often in one place. The Internet, however, encourages and easily facilitates two Homo Hubris like things: (1) the dissemination of abstract, rootless, “knowledge”; and (2) the immediate dissemination of the mostly fatuous, often ignorant and almost always dishonourable opinions and views of the Homo Hubris hordes. In addition, it is increasingly used, and often covertly censored by, functionaries and flunkeys of modern nation-States to spread their grossly un-numinous abstractions and their propaganda; and now possesses a commercialized Media-infested nature.
Thus, there is the availability and the encouragement of the worthless, the profane, the abstract, the lifeless, the un-numinous, the propagandistic, allowing for and encouraging as never before a pretentious pseudo-intellectual type of “knowledge” and of “knowing”, and an immediate spewing forth of personal dishonour.
Thus, instead of being primarily used – as it might have been – as one new means of communication between rational, empathic, enlightened individuals, it has been used and is being used in the service of Homo Hubris, and of those oligarchies and interest groups which have a vested interest in the continuing profanity of Homo Hubris and in the continuing existence of the un-numinous abstractions on which the modern West is based.
As with many things modern, machine-based and technological, the disadvantages of this Internet now far outweigh its few remaining advantages. In addition, and in particular, the truely empathic, the truely wise – those connected or re-connected to The Numen – have little or no need of the immediacy of such a modern medium. The only minuscule value of the medium of the Internet is that it still currently allows the free dissemination of items contrary to the material, un-numinous Zeitgeist of the modern West, enabling those few who might be interested in more numinous matters to reflect upon such matters, and, after such reflexion, if they consider it suitable, to act upon them, in their own species of causal time and in their own individual way.
(2) As I wrote some years, in a letter to a friend:
The toil of earlier times was often much harder than it is now; but the toil that is necessary, now, to live simply, frugally, is not that hard – although it will be so for those who have never done such work! I remember how many people – especially young people – started work in the fields at my previous place of work. Some lasted a few hours; some lasted a week; a few lasted a few weeks. None lasted longer, leaving us two [old farm hands] with our hoes, our taciturn ways, to knowingly smile.
(3) This particular tenet – this particular abstraction – may be said to have its modern origins in the writings of Francis Bacon.
Islam and National-Socialism: The Basis for Co-operation
Should we seek to find allies and friends among those of other races who are fighting the common Zionist enemy? Or should we regard such people as ‘racially inferior’? Indeed, how should we react to and interact with people of other races, other cultures?
Our own Aryan ethics must guide us, and our ethics alone. Our Aryan – our National-Socialist – ethics are based upon the principles of honour, loyalty and duty. Honour demands that we act in a cultured, a civilized, way: that we have self-control, and manners. Honour demands that we strive to treat others fairly. That is, honour demands that we act with nobility of spirit. Of course, honour also demands that if someone tries to bully us, or attacks us, that we stand our ground, that we fight back.
Our guiding principle in our everyday lives should be one of our honour giving us the inner strength, the self-respect, we need, based as this strength and self-respect is on our acceptance of our noble duty to our own folk: that is, on knowing how we relate to our folk, our culture, and thence to our past, our ancestors, and to Nature itself. Our acceptance of honour – our inner strength – also means that we have a noble respect for others, regardless of their status and origins. As it says in our Aryan Code of Honour:
Thus, the basis for co-operation between National-Socialists and Muslims is mutual respect, deriving from the warrior – the civilized – principle of honour. We must respect them, as individuals; be respectful toward their culture, their Way of Life (Islam); and treat them as comrades-in-arms fighting our common enemy. In return, they must respect us, and be respectful toward our own Way of Life (as manifest in genuine, ethical, National-Socialism).
Hence, we should not regard them – and/or their culture, their Way of Life – as ‘inferior’, for that is a dishonourable thing to do; contrary to our ethics. Instead, there should be a mutual respect based on our honourable acceptance of our differences. National-Socialism accepts that Nature has worked to produce, in human beings, diversity and difference, and that we should respect and value this natural diversity and difference, and aid and further evolve it. This means that we should be proud of our own heritage, culture and identity, and accept that others should be proud of theirs. It also means that one of our aims is to work toward the creation of free, independent, homelands where the different peoples of different cultures and different ways of life can live according to their own values and according to their own ways of life.
David Myatt
The Aryan Code of Honour
The word of a man or woman of honour is their bond – for when a man or woman of honour gives their word (“On my word of honour…”) they mean it, since to break one’s word is a dishonourable act. An oath of loyalty or allegiance to someone, once sworn by a man or woman of honour (“I swear by my honour that I shall…”) can only be ended either: (i) by the man or woman of honour formally asking the person to whom the oath was sworn to release them from that oath, and that person agreeing so to release them; or (ii) by the death of the person to whom the oath was sworn. Anything else is dishonourable.
A man or woman of honour is prepared to do their honourable duty by challenging to a duel anyone who impugns their honour or who makes dishonourable accusations against them. Anyone so challenged to a duel who, refusing to publicly and unreservedly apologize, refuses also to accept such a challenge to a duel for whatever reason, is acting dishonourably, and it is right to call such a person a coward and to dismiss as untruthful any accusations such a coward has made. Honour is only satisfied – for the person so accused – if they challenge their accuser to a duel and fight it; the honour of the person who so makes such accusations or who so impugns another person’s honour, is only satisfied if they either unreservedly apologize or accept such a challenge and fights such a duel according to the etiquette of duelling.
A man or woman of honour may also challenge to a duel and fight in such a duel, a person who has acted dishonourably toward someone whom the man or woman of honour has sworn loyalty or allegiance to or whom they honourably champion. A man or woman of honour always does the duty they have sworn to do, however inconvenient it may be and however dangerous, because it is honourable to do one’s duty and dishonourable not to do one’s duty. A man or woman of honour is prepared to die – if necessary by their own hand – rather than suffer the indignity of having to do anything dishonourable.
A man or woman of honour can only surrender to or admit to defeat by someone who is as dignified and as honourable as they themselves are – that is, they can only entrust themselves under such circumstances to another man or woman of honour who swears to treat their defeated enemy with dignity and honour. A man or woman of honour would prefer to die fighting, or die by their own hand, rather than subject themselves to the indignity of being defeated by someone who is not a man or woman of honour.
A man or woman of honour treats others courteously, regardless of their culture, religion, status, origins, and race, and is only disdainful and contemptuous of those who, by their attitude, actions and behaviour, treat they themselves with disrespect or try to personally harm them, or who treat with disrespect or try to harm those whom the individual man or woman of honour have personally sworn loyalty to or whom they champion.
A man or woman of honour, when called upon to act, or when honour bids them act, acts without hesitation provided always that honour is satisfied.
A man or woman of honour, in public, is somewhat reserved and controlled and not given to displays of emotion, nor to boasting, preferring as they do deeds to words.
A man or woman of honour does not lie, once having sworn on oath (“I swear on my honour that I shall speak the truth…”) as they do not steal from others or cheat others for such conduct is dishonourable.
A man or woman of honour may use guile or cunning to deceive sworn enemies, and sworn enemies only, provided always that they do not personally benefit from such guile or cunning and provided always that honour is satisfied.
Editorial Note: The above article was written by Myatt, for his Reichsfolk group, sometime in 1998 CE.
The Nature of Our Being:
Our basic nature is that we are a nexion, a connexion between the causal and the acausal. That is, we – like all living-beings – possess, by virtue of being alive, acausal energy (See Note 1). This acausal energy is what animates us, what makes our physical bodies alive – more than an inert collection of elements, molecules and atoms – and this acausal energy is not destroyed when that physical body dies. This is so by the very nature of that acausal energy – which energy cannot be destroyed, in causal space-time.
In addition, we human beings, of all the life we currently are aware of, possess not only the faculty of consciousness – of causal reflexion – but also the ability to consciously change our behaviour. That is, we can consciously decide to do something, or not do something, and thus we can, to a certain extent, change or evolve ourselves. In many ways, culture is a means to aid us in this evolutionary change, which evolutionary change – according to The Numinous Way – is a change toward empathy, compassion, honour and reason, and this change itself is an acquisition, by us as individuals, of additional acausal energy. Thus, this change in ourselves is a type of ordered presencing of acausal energy in the causal.
This basic overview of the nature of causal beings raises some interesting questions. For example: (a) When a living-being that exists in causal space-time “dies”, then what happens to the acausal energy that animated that living-being? (b) How does such acausal energy come to animate that certain collocation of physical elements, molecules and atoms originally? (c) What effect, if any, does an increase in acausal energy, produced by our conscious evolution – our conscious change of ourselves – have on what happens to the acausal energy after our causal death?
In respect of what happens to the acausal energy, it does not “go back” to or transcend to the acausal, for the acausal is already implicit within causal space-time; or rather, to be precise, the causal is a limiting case of the acausal – where there are only three spatial dimensions and only one dimension of Time, a linear one. That is, there is no physical, causal, separation between the causal and acausal, as might be imagined if we were thinking in terms of causal geometry. To understand the relation, we must think acausally, in terms of an unspecified, unlimited, number of dimensions which are not spatial and which are not limited to one linear Time dimension but which rather have many acausal (and thus un-linear) Time dimensions. All that happens, is that the specific physical connexion between causal and acausal is closed: physical matter in a certain place is no longer animated by acausal energy. Thus, the acausal energy that was presenced in a living-being becomes again unformed, unpresenced, acausal energy.
In respect of whether we can, in the causal, affect what happens to such acausal energy, The Numinous Way posits that we human beings, by virtue of our nature, have the ability to “form” or “pattern” such acausal energy as is presenced in us as living-beings – to increase it, to (in a symbolic way) strengthen it – and as such we can access part of the acausal itself, or have the possibility to do this, both in and during our mortal, causal, existence, and after such causal existence has ended. To access it, we have to “think acausally”, to develope an acausal way of being within us. This means developing, refining, the faculty of consciousness, and especially the faculty of empathy, which is presenced in us and in our cultures by The Numinous, by honour, by compassion, by reason, by an awareness of ourselves as but one nexion among the matrix of connexions which are the living Cosmos, which connexions include Nature, and our own ancestral culture. It means a return to the “slow”, natural time of Nature, of Life, of the acausal, and away from the often manic always unnatural causal time we have created by our abstractions, our lack of empathy, our lack of a cosmic and numinous perspective.
If we so access, so presence, such acausal energy, then there exists the possibility of that which is the essence of our being – the acausal aspect – continuing in a new way in the acausal when our causal existence ends, which continuation can be said to be the meaning of such a causal existence: an opportunity presented by the presencing that is our finite mortal life. As to the nature of such a continuing, all that can be said at present is that it would be – must be, given the nature of the acausal – beyond the causal form which we apprehend as “the self”. That is, it is an evolution of us, as beings; a move-toward an acausal existence which by virtue of the nature of the acausal is not limited, or constrained, by causal time, and not limited, or constrained by spatial dimensions. Thus, causal concepts such as taking causal time to “move” or travel from one point in causal space to another causal point are irrelevant, as is the causal concept of birth-life-death.
However, this continuing is not an imperative of our causal existence – it is just a possibility, an opportunity. It is up to us to achieve it, to bring-it-into-being. If it is not achieved, then the acausal energy which was presenced in one living human being simply becomes un-presenced, in the causal: the causal aspects are lost. Or rather, the causal aspects which exist, which come-into-being, through such a life – such things as memory, experience, the very “personal nature” of such a living-being – are lost. In contrast, in a continuing, these aspects are part of the genesis for the new type of supra-personal being which becomes formed, or which may becomes formed, in the acausal.
In respect of how acausal energy comes to animate a certain collocation of physical elements, molecules and atoms – to bring-into-being a causal life – there can be, at present, only speculation, although it could be assumed that it is natural process, inherent in the process of living-beings, in the very fabric of acausal space-time. That is, the potential to presence acausal energy in the causal – to animate physical matter – is part of of the nature of acausal being itself.
Acausal Existence, Rebirth, and the Illusion of the Self:
One question which arises concerns the nature of the acausal energy which is no longer presenced in the causal by a living-being. This energy simply merges back unformed into the acausal from whence it was presenced, and as such may again be presenced in some way in some living-being some-where, possibly on this planet which we call Earth and possibly in some other form of life instead of a human being. But while this process has some similarities to a process described in Buddhism, it is not identical to that of “rebirth” in the Buddhist (or Hindu) sense – for The Numinous Way is simply rationally describing, using new concepts such as acausal, nexion and presencing, the nature of our being and the processes of life.(See Note 2)
In addition, The Numinous Way describes the causal self – to which we are often attached by causal desires and which often gives rises to or which causes suffering, for other living-beings – as an abstraction, a causal illusion: a manifestation of causality; or, more correctly, as a manifestation of limited “causal thinking”, which thinking is based upon and depends upon abstractions.
For The Numinous Way, the reality of our being can only be correctly described in terms of causal and acausal: as one nexion, one connexion, between the causal and the acausal, and as such as possessed of acausal energy. To think in the reductionist, abstract, causal way – in terms of a distinct, separate, un-connected, self – is to misunderstand the nature of our being, the nature of Life, and the reality of the Cosmos, for this “self” is a trick of causal perception. To concentrate on this “self” reveals a lack of empathy – a lack of insight, and such a concentration on such an illusory self is one cause of suffering, which suffering can be alleviated, or removed, through acausal thinking, through that acausal way of being which is presenced in empathy, honour, reason and compassion.
Conclusion:
In essence, The Numinous Way posits that we possess, by virtue of being living-beings, a certain type and a certain amount of causal energy, and that we – as human beings possessed of consciousness and will – change increase such acausal energy. The acausal energy we possess lives on after the death of our mortal, causal, bodies, and returns to the acausal – to acausal space-time, which acausal space-time, by its nature, is not some separate physical realm but rather the reality of the Cosmos itself.
That is, causal space-time, the physical universe we are aware of through our physical senses, is a special – a limiting – case of the Cosmos, for the acausal is both within and around the causal, by virtue of there being no limited spatial dimensions, and no linear one dimensional time, in the acausal. In one sense, we can consider the causal – the physical universe of three spatial dimensions and one causal/linear time dimension – as a type of presencing of the acausal, with living-beings as connexions/nexions to certain aspects of the acausal itself.
The Numinous Way posits that empathy is a faculty which we human beings can develope, and that such development enables us to “pattern”, to form, what acausal energy we are by virtue of being alive in the causal. If we do not do this, then such acausal energy – after our causal death – returns to its original unformed, un-causal, state in an aspect of the acausal. But if we do this, then in effect we begin the creation of a new type of acausal being, which being may have the ability to exist, as an entity, in the acausal after our causal death. The nature of this acausal being is speculative, but it is assumed that it is not based on the causal pattern of “the self” but is instead an evolution of such a “self” – with an awareness beyond the individual and thus a knowing of the matrix of Life which is the Cosmos. That is, it is a new (to us) type of consciousness.
DW Myatt
Notes:
(1) For a basic, and tentative, description, see the essay Acausal Science.
(2) As noted in some other essays, The Numinous Way, unlike Buddhism, affirms that personal honour – and all that it implies, for example in terms of self-defence – is important, and a manifestation, a presencing, of the acausal. That is, that honour is numinous – one means to affirm life in a moral, ethical, way. In addition, The Numinous Way stresses the value of culture, and the joy, the possibilities, of life, and does not advocate a life of self-denying austerity and “meditation” but rather a true, gentle and ethical middle-way somewhat akin to the wu-wei of Taoism. Thus, while comparisons with both Buddhism and Taoism are possible, The Numinous Way can be considered to be a new manifestation of the acausal (“eternal”) truths about Life, our human nature and the meaning of our lives.
These are the tears that I have cried, that I should have cried – tears which unbidden fall as I listen to Preco preheminencie by Dunstable; and tears which express my longing for that beauty, that love, that ineffable goodness which sometimes someone somewhere has presenced on this grieving Earth.
This is what I am – these tears, born of both suffering and joy, and bearing as they do in memories of light and dark the life which was, is, mine. This is what I am – that quiet look of love; that desire to transcend beyond the moment to where exists a purity of being.
Why has the learning not been learnt? Am I with my life an analogy, an answer? Seeking, questing, plunging often without any thought, reason or plan, into life, knowing thus that exhilaration of existence as when one early Winter’s morning I fastly cycled on roads of snow newly iced by a night of bright moon to give to she whom I then loved just one letter of love – one hour, one moment of existence, of perfect bliss, of perfect union of body, thought, spirit, soul, as when I stubborn beyond myself grimly bore my complaining body on through the stark deathly heat of the desert to reach just one more goal in two weeks of tortured goals whose ending left me briefly suspended between life and death, my being then transcending out as if I had become the desert, the Sun, the water that saved me, the people who in their simple act of kindness took me in and brought me even then to an insight of understanding of their culture, their Prophet, their God.
Seeking, questing, as when I gently cared for a patient, dying, and listened as he told of how he had endured years in those Trenches of stalemate war. There, in a bedside drawer were his medals, brought by his wife – and that last night I stood watching, unseen, as she briefly took them out as he rasped, to breathe his last breath of life.
Seeking, questing – as when I sat on the edge of the bed of she whom I loved who loved me, and held her as she drifted into that last and never-ending sleep. Seeking, questing., forgetting as when, less than a year later I was travelling, writing, speaking words of chaos and of hate, as if hoping such words might change what-was for what I hoped might-be, forgetting, forgetting the pain, the anger, the suffering, even the deaths, caused. Had she, my love, died in my arms in vain? Seeking, questing, as when years later I, grieving, sorrowed as my then wife became troubled, ill, and I knew my blame; forgetting – as when, less than six months later, in a land of hot Sun I was again preaching death, destruction, as if it might again change what-was to what I in arrogance believed should-be…
So much known, seen, felt – so many tears, insights along the Way, and so many times when those tears, insights, were lost. It was as if I had to start all over again, and re-learn what life, myself, in-between, had forced me to forget. As if my questing life each year had to shed its slowly learnt wisdom to vigourously grow, up, upwards to where the pain of remembering merged with the joy of passion; upward, ever upward beyond and between the light and the dark. And I am, was, like them – those who for thousands of years acted to strive to change what-was to what they believed should-be, who experienced, who learned, who forgot and who so acted again. I – the deed; the redemption and the blame. I, they, we – in our tears, our understanding a beginning of what we should and can be.
Seeking, questing, forgetting until I finally distilled the essence – which is of empathy and honour.
Yesterday – as I myself was held, touched, kissed by a woman – I was blessed through her, with her, by her, with another intimation of the divine, another presencing of the numinous, and all I can do to force myself to remember is create these words, only these words, born by tears; born of divine music, presencing: such a poor recompense for five thousand years of suffering, seeking, questing, forgetting, pain, and toil.
David Myatt
Source: Selected Letters of David Myatt, Part 1
A quite relaxing day, for me: a day of unexpected sunshine and September warmth after so many dull and rainy days, and I spent most the hours of the daylight morning in the fields, or sitting by the large pond listening to the song of the birds, watching the Dragonflies, the Butterflies and the pond life, with the afternoon spent in gentle gardening, and then just sitting in the warming Sun.
There has been thus moments of pleasure, peace and joy, as of those remembered times when one’s distant gentle lover comes, if only briefly, to stay with one, again. Thus was I, thus am I, brought back, or moved forward, to just-be in the flow of Life as Life flows, slowly, when we gently let-go of that perception which is our small and often selfish self: to feel, to be-again, not apart from Nature.
Hence I am again but one life slowly dwelling in some small part of a rural England that I strive to keep within me by the slow movement of only walking, or cycling, along the country lanes, and which never takes me far from the meadow fields or from the hills which rear up, wooded, less than half a mile away.
Thus has there been time for that calm thinking that arises slowly, naturally, as the Cumulus cloud arose this morning, early, to briefly shade the Sun before they, the clouds, changed so slowly to leave me where my horizon of sighted landscape ended, far beyond the farthest trees, hedge, and hill that I could see. And thus was there a slow thinking about, a dwelling upon, your question of balance…..
Do you find you are still unsatisfied as to path? Or did you find/are still finding, a synthesis between the many? It’s the Balance I find that I seek, and hope for.
…..and yet, for myself, I feel it is more a question of change than of balance, as if we, as a species, are poised, caught, between the past of our animal ancestral nature and the future that surely awaits us if we can change, evolve, into a different kind of being, perhaps into an almost new species. Thus do I sense us, now, as in transition and yet mesmerized, held-back, even imprisoned, by the things we in our hubris-like cleverness have constructed: by the words, the terms, the very language, we have manufactured in order to try and understand ourselves, others, and this world.
Thus do we now interpret others, ourselves, the world – Reality – by abstractions which we project: which we have mentally-constructed and to which we assign “names” and terms, thus obscuring, hiding, the very essence itself, and thus mistaking such manufactured things for this essence.
Thus have we and for example manufactured a concept called a “nation” and a “State”, and have theories of how to govern such constructs, and manufactured “laws” to ensure some kind of abstract “order” within such places, as millions have given their “loyalty” to such abstract things and fought and died and caused great suffering in order to “defend” them or bring them into-being. Thus have we given “names” to differences among and within ourselves – based on some outward “sign” such as skin colour or on some inner sign such as a perceived or assumed “religious” or “political” belief – and thus dishonourably, un-empathically, used such “differences” as a criteria of worth and judgement, and in the process often or mostly behaving in a quite inhuman way. For all such abstractions – however named or described – seem to me to obscure The Numinous: obscure the simple reality which is of the connectedness, the acausal unity, of all Life.
I am as guilty as anyone in having done such things, for – for nearly four decades – I believed in or upheld some such abstraction or other, and used such things as not only a measure of the meaning of my own life, but also as a criteria of judgement, just as I often used violence in pursuit of such abstractions. It did not matter that I sincerely believed my inner intentions were noble and “good”; what mattered was that all such abstractions caused suffering for someone, or some many, somewhere. For such suffering was a natural consequence of those abstractions, constructed and manufactured as such things were by us in our vain arrogance.
Of course, many have understood this, or felt this, over the millennia – as some Ways have been developed to try and move us back toward the reality of connectedness. But always – always, it seems to me – over causal time, the simple unaffected pure meaning, the suffering insight, becomes lost in the words and through dogma, especially through dogma, and in particular through our very need, our very desire, to strive to “attain” some-thing, or to follow some-thing, or someone.
Perhaps only in music, Art, literature, poetry, a personal loyal love, and such-like emanations – in those things which wordlessly capture if only for a moment the Numinous itself – there is and has been a reminder of what-is, of what can-be. Of what we have forgotten and what we have glimpsed or have the capacity to glimpse, to feel, to know.
It seems to me, finally, that there are no answers, because no questions exist; we only impose questions upon what-is. For we have this need to make complex what is simple; we have this Promethean irritation within us. Certainly, this inner irritation, this inability to be empathic with Life (except perhaps in moments) brings us or can bring us joy, ecstasy, and can move us toward a different and at times exhilarating existence – as I know from my own not inactive, woman-loving, and sometimes warrior-like, life. But such a living I sense and feel is only a stasis, a repeat of our often barbaric, animal-like, past, and not the change, the evolution, we need and which surely is possible now, from the understanding the past five thousand years or so has given us.
Thus, my Path now is my Path – which in my temerity I have called The Numinous Way, and which, as it exists now due to the metamorphosis of recent years, represents the results of my ponderings, my thinking, my feelings, and what little knowledge I have acquired from pathei mathos.
Have you found that the seekers path has brought you as much joy as sorrow?
“Always a dream or a memory
Lead us on
And we wait like children
Trusting in the spirits of the Earth.
We love unsuspecting
While they our lovers scheme,
Succour themselves on our blood
And bleed us dry…”
In truth I have found, over four decades of seeking, more sorrow than joy – and yet the sorrow now seems to have merged with the joy to become some-thing which is of both yet beyond both. A new way of feeling, perhaps; or a new way of being, far beyond any words I know, and certainly beyond any and all the various and many Ways and Paths I have experienced and lived. But, of course, there are times – many times – when the sadness seeps back to bring forth burgeoning tears.
All I have from four decades of strife, seeking, searching, questions – of a learning from my plenitude of mistakes – are some tentative scribblings of my own, manifest in The Numinous way, with its Cosmic Ethics, its emphasis on empathy, compassion and honour, and its understanding of how our manufactured abstractions cause and continue to cause suffering, re-enforce our hubris, obscure our connexion to the Cosmos, and distance us from The Numinous.
DW Myatt
(Taken from The Selected Letters of DW Myatt, Volume 1)
