Great God Leviathan: Our Hubris Will Destroy Us
I am working on a book. The title is Great God Leviathan; The War Between the Material and the Ineffable. It will be not only a critique of Thomas Hobbes’ similarly titled work, but also the past several centuries of political theory, in particular the 20th century with its oceans of blood.
Hobbes’ book is usually viewed as a spirited defence of monarchy and the social contract – a conservative work, standing in stark contrast to Locke’s Liberalism. It is nothing of the sort. The two were no more in opposition than Trotsky and Lenin. Both agree on their foundational premise: that miracles don’t exist, God is an absentee landlord, and that to preserve civilization we must construct a mechanical super-entity to rule over us.
Great God Leviathan, that horrific mechanical god whose gears are greased with blood.
As a book, it will explore this thesis to a great depth; showing how our attempts to create a social machine, an objective philosophy, have failed us time and time again. Whether you call it communism, or capitalism, or liberal democracy, or fascism, or managerial economics, or globalism – whatever the latest iteration of Leviathan might be, it’s doomed to failure, and the price will be paid in blood. Its latest manifestation just suffered a major setback, however, and there is an opportunity present. Western Civilization – and through us, the world – has the opportunity to return commons sense to its place in the ontological hierarchy, and reintroduce the upward pull of God, the Tao, the Mandate of Heaven, whatever you want to call it – the one True God which has blood enough to spare that it doesn’t demand sacrifice from us. The future of political theory which avoids fire raining down from the heavens isn’t some new form of organization; it’s a spiritual transformation of the citizens, and their leadership.
The reason I’m writing about this today is because – as usual – I feel as if I’m being overtaken by events in the world at large. A full exploration of the ideas will require a book, which will require time, but for now I can toss the raw ideas out there, and I know at least a few of you will pick up on them. The Alt Right is winning, and as a consequence we risk falling into that same old trap which all victorious armies face: becoming the very thing which we opposed.
A couple of articles: first, from Laramie Hirsch:
No longer under siege, the Alt-Right has some wiggle room. It can relax a bit and enjoy a little cultural dominance for a change. And so, what’s happening? The movement is largely appearing to lean white nationalist. White nationalism has become the end in and of itself for the Alt-Right. The entire movement–which has no leaders–is swaying into this direction, I’m afraid.
Bottom line: MultiKult, the Diversity Dictatorship, and the reverse racism that is permissible for “everyone but the white bigots” –it all needs to be fought against. Surely. I don’t mind having white groups, voluntary segregation, white pride and whatnot. Every other ethnicity does. But becoming like the Left–failing to realize that a nation’s homogeneity is NOT an end unto itself–becoming like that will be the downfall of the Alt-Right.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who places Tribe as his highest, but not his only, value. Doing so begs the question: if Tribe is the highest value, but comes into conflict with other values (such as the individual, the family, the country, and just dealings with outsiders), what is the decision making process with balances them? If Tribe is the only value, then all else must be subsumed by it: individuals must cede autonomy for the sake of the Tribe, and outside groups will be ruthlessly exploited wherever possible. If Tribe is just one of many values, however – even if it is ranked as the most important – then there must be something higher than Tribe which decides upon a course of action, when these values come into conflict.
An organic society which lives and breathes and changes with the times cannot pin itself to any single mechanical, objective understanding of the world. This has been the mistake we’ve been making for the past several centuries, trying to create a perfect machine to guide our actions. Rather, the gravitational source for civilization must be something higher than civilization itself. Just as mathematics is under-girded by the faith-based assumption that mathematics is valid, so must societal principles be tied to something higher, something spiritual in nature. We must aim our sights on the unspeakable ineffable, rather than the merely material. The Tao which can be spoken is not the true Tao, after all.
Mike Cernovich writes about his experience at the recent NPI conference:
Let’s assume your goal is to normalize Nazis, which is what has been said at Richard Spencer. If you wanted to normalize being a Nazi, would you throw up an Heil Hitler in public after you invited over 100 fake news journalists to your event? Think this one through before forming an opinion.
Why then were people at the event throwing up the HH? What tactical or strategic purpose could that possibly serve?
This is what controlled opposition looks like.
Vox Day corrects some of the wilder claims made by Cernovich (it is unlikely that Richard Spencer is a government plant; his hair is too fabulous), but the thrust of the argument remains. We have been using the tactics of the underdog for some time now. As many have noted, we’re the new anti-establishment hippies (I believe RamZPaul was the first to make this observation), but we’re no longer the underdog – and if we continue to use underdog tactics, we will become no different than the neo-hippies whom we are in the process of replacing. We will continue to fight the last war, and we will lose as certainly as Hitler’s Germany did, paving the way for the destruction of our own people.
We cannot hope to get anywhere if we continue to be reactionary. The way to crush the Left isn’t to fight them; then we merely become them. The way to crush the left is to return to the upward pull, to build a civilization which glorifies God and which has earned the Mandate of Heaven. To strive for perfection while forgiving imperfection, rather than defining perfection as whatever we are already, while attacking those who are unlike us.
I worry that we have lost the linguistic ability to articulate this. Miracle has come to mean something which doesn’t happen. Magic is just smoke and lights on some stage in Vegas, an exhibition meant for puerile entertainment. Grace is an athletic ability displayed by porn stars. Evolution theory states that organisms cannot and will not evolve to have an accurate understanding of the world, and yet we still presume that our understanding of evolution is true. The chemicals in our brains say they are just chemicals and we believe them. We have tried to turn our own theories into deities – propaganda, usury, homo economicus – and we have turned away from that which sustains the universe, the firmament upon which all thought and being lies.
Faith and humbleness are sorely lacking in this wretched land of modernity. To escape this scrap yard, piety is the only way.
Lord, have mercy.
ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ
Those are perfectly valid concerns. I was worried that, after winning the election, most of us would go back to sleep, and it would all be for nothing. The Establishment will go right back to trying to take control again and get their agenda back on track. That cannot be allowed to happen. We cannot rest yet, as there are more battles to come.
Roosh recently posted a similar theme to your conclusion: that we have to go on to live virtuous lives to continue this movement. I can’t get the exact wording because his site is blocked on the network I’m on at the moment.
Looking forward to your book.
Your writing is not appreciated enough. Excellent insights, well articulated.
As to tribe: moreover, the smart people realize that, if the highest value is tribe, then there are no values. In other words, our concept of the good is necessarily rooted in the transcendent. If there is no absolute idea of the good, then no contingent thing can be understood in terms of its proportionality thereto. Without the transcendent Good, the “good” of tribe is meaningless. Smart, broken people see this, and turn on their own tribes for it.
Very poignant at the end, regarding our inability to articulate perfection. I read, years ago, that psychologists were worried at the increasing inability of their patients to articulate their own thoughts. Not that I value psychology, obviously, but the observation corresponds to my own in the ecclesiastical and philosophical spheres. I tried taking a graduate course on philosophy while doing my Master’s in Classical Philology; the philosophy department’s graduates seemed unwilling to deal with Aristotle’s thoughts on his own terms, always inserting their irrelevant objections. After speaking further with many of them, it became clear that they simply were not able to think clearly enough to understand Aristotle; so, posing as an intelligent person by pretending to criticise him was easier.
That’s why my writings at ROK focused on piety so heavily, and just putting people in touch with something Holy. I know that I have not been spared because I am intelligent or crafty. Rather, in my days as a Protestant, God was good enough to permit me to touch Him, somewhat, in contemplation. I walked into a Divine Liturgy at the local Greek Orthodox church, and sensed that same Presence in a more or less intact, Christian culture and form of worship for the first time. As time went on, I came to perceive the integrity of that Truth in the Catholic Church, though the institutions now posing as Catholic no longer have membership in that Body. The common theme throughout, was contact with the Sacred, the True Sacred. This experience silences our vain pomps, unprincipled exceptions and fatuous objections. It increases our pain, because the filth of our age then seems 1000 times filthier; yet it also gives us the one thing needful to carry on living as men, rather than slaves.
Thank you, Aurelius, it’s good to hear from you.
Beware the dangers of a writer’s life in Nature. I understand it can be quite solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. ;-)