The Fundamentals

Fundamentals of a New Movement


The overarching, basic fundamentals of a New Movement are listed here. The link leads to the relevant post below. Also see "The Fundamentals" post list to the lower right. This is our new path. If you agree with this direction, then join with us.


The Old Movement is dead. Let us instead build something that works, a New Movement, a fresh start.



Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Racial Existentialism

For authentic authenticity and against Heidegger.

In this post I begin – the very beginning - the process of outlining a philosophical basis for the worldview of the Sallis Groupuscule.  A side-effect, if you will, is criticism of Heidegger, who is favored by the traditionalist faction of the “movement.”

My major weakness here – that I am an empiricist STEM person lacking any formal training in philosophy – may actually be a strength: What is needed is direct, simple, plain-talk, not hundreds of pages of abstract theorizing.  The ultimate aim of philosophy is, or should be, to place man within the scope of the universe, to advise on how to live a good and proper life, how to situate man within the scope of his existence…not to demonstrate one’s “intellectual bonafides” by taking a whole chapter to express an idea that could have been more efficiently expressed in a single sentence (here’s looking at you, Heidegger).

I’d like to point out as well that those who automatically privilege the views of Heidegger over that of Sallis are essentially arguing by “appeal to authority” – what about Der Right’s complaints about “credentialism?”  Interesting that “credentialism” is always brought up with respect to STEM, which at least has some objective basis, and not for philosophy, which is mostly subjective.  Hypocritical much?

The key point is this analysis, ultimately, is authenticity. What is it? Who decides what it is?  For individuals?  For groups?  As regards the latter, is it proper to ascribe authenticity to entire populations?

Authenticity cannot be dictated from the “other;” that by definition invalidates claims of authenticity. Authenticity can only come from self, with that “self” being the individual or the group.

How does a person or group know that they are behaving in a manner truly authentic?  Can there be any objective confirmation of that?

Let’s consider some writings by myself and others on this topic, before briefly summarizing at the end.

See this.

…it was clear that Heidegger initially thought that National Socialism was an alternative to modern technological nihilism, but eventually he came to see it as just another expression of the same underlying worldview. For Heidegger, nihilism is basically having a false vision of man as being uprooted from nature and history and capable of controlling and consuming them.

Why is that a false vision?  Who decides?

The only way to avoid this trap is to move the battle from the political to the metapolitical plane. We need a fundamental transformation of our view of ourselves and our relationship to history and nature. But it is not as simple is manufacturing and promulgating a correct alternative worldview, for such a project itself is a form of technological nihilism. It assumes that the human mind and its machinations can stand behind culture and history and manufacture them according to its designs. Whereas the truth is that history and culture stand behind us. We are shaped by cultural and historical forces we can neither understand nor control.

Not very Faustian, is it?  

But once we recognize this fact, i.e., that we are finite beings, rooted in a particular time and place, rather than rootless cosmopolitan citizens of nowhere, the spell of nihilism is broken, which clears a space in which a new dispensation — a new fundamental worldview — can emerge.

If only we can clear a space so a New Movement can emerge, eh?

Thus Heideggerian metapolitics is not the construction of systems of ideas, ideologies, or -isms. Any worldview we can construct is simply an expression of nihilism, not an alternative to it. But that does not mean that we are impotent. We might not be able to manufacture an alternative, but we can still help one to emerge, first and foremost by owning up to our finitude and rootedness, then by clearing away the detritus of nihilism to create a space in which an alternative might grow.

One can create political policies. One can create legal codes. One can build the damned wall. But it is not in our power to manufacture a new culture.

Because Johnson says so!  QED!

But neither can we manufacture a simple tomato. 

Give genetic engineering a chance.

We can, however, work with forces we ultimately do not understand or control — nature itself — to grow tomatoes. 

Certainly, traditionalists hiding in their hobbit holes (*) cannot understand or control nature.

We can clear a space, plant a seed, weed, water, and fertilize — and then wait. We can do the same in the metapolitical realm: clear spaces by deconstructing false ideas, plant identitarian and ethnonationalist seeds, and tend what grows.

Translation: do nothing and rattle the tin cup for “D’Nations.”

That’s what we do here at Counter-Currents. We help people envision new answers to the questions “Who are we?” “What is the right way to live together?” and “How can we get there from here?”

No, actually they beg for money and engage in ethnoimperialist hypocrisy.

Heidegger did not believe that philosophers or poets are the hidden legislators of mankind, whose machinations create history. 

That’s good, since Heidegger was an idiot and shouldn’t be the “legislator” of anything.

But that doesn’t mean we have to shut up and let history do the talking, or sit back and let history do the work. Rather, Heidegger believed that history speaks and acts through us. Philosophers and poets are the first people to become aware of fundamental changes in the Zeitgeist. 

Alternatively, they create those fundamental changes and then slyly assert that they became “aware” of some underlying self-actualizing process.

Thus dissident thinkers and artists proceed historical change not as its creators but as its prophets, awakening and leading people to changes that are already underway. The very fact that we can conceive of fundamentally different ideas may mean that a new dispensation is nearing.

To be fair, Yockey had a similar idea – that there is a “spirit of the age” that manifests as a natural evolution of the lifecycle of the High Culture – so I cannot be too harsh here. However, this seems hand-waving or passing the buck; there is no explanation of why a “new dispensation” occurs, except there is the a prior assumption that “historical change” and “a new dispensation” cannot be in any real way influenced by people ,and certainly not created. I do not like a priori assumptions nor just shrugging off the question of the actual mechanism of historical change.

Let’s see what I wrote before about the possibilities of guiding historical change.

Although the Jewish author Isaac Asimov may not be popular among many white gentile racial nationalists, his Foundation series can provide a useful analogy here. “The Foundation” was meant to jumpstart a new civilization after the collapse of the “Galactic Empire,” so that the post-collapse “era of barbarism” would be a mere thousand years, instead of 30,000. Facing as we do the collapse of the West through the Winter of the Faustian age, it may be prudent to lay the seeds of a new emergent white, Western civilization for the long term, as we also fight the more short-term and medium-term battles to preserve the white race and save as much of Western Faustian civilization as possible. Without these shorter range objectives, the long term civilizational (re)birth will not be possible. Conversely, without a civilizational (re)birth, long-term white preservationism would be questionable.

So, there are two things that need to be going on here. First is the ongoing struggle for white racial preservationism and to save as much of the Faustian culture as possible, to serve as a knowledge base and building blocks for the new High Culture of the West. Second, an effort must be initiated to begin the process of laying the groundwork for this new High Culture. As indicated above, of course a High Culture is an organic phenomenon that cannot be created in a pre-planned form and artificially imposed on a people. However, it is possible to plant the seeds and to have some choice as to which seeds are planted. And then, we can nurture the seedling as it grows, and as it develops according to its own inherent character. This we can do and this we must do.

This is a serious matter requiring forward-thinking strategy of an extreme visionary character, not something that can be productively “discussed” on “blog threads” or other (typically inane) public forums. It is not something that can occur overnight. This is a long-term, multi-generational project that needs to be undertaken by dedicated individuals who wish to lay the foundation of something great and noble for posterity. This will not be not any “quick fix” whose results may be seen in a decade or two; instead, this is a project that has the potential to influence the course of human history and it must be conducted on that higher level.

Therefore, this essay is simply a call for action and an initial and cursory consideration of the possibilities. If such a project is ever initiated, it should not, and must not, devolve into the mundane “movement” minutiae that many obsess over, nor can it be linked to the more serious, yet short-term, necessary “stop-gap” activism required to save our people and culture today. This is another matter, on another level, entirely.

Many are called; few are chosen. The Future Awaits.

So, I’m not stating that historical change can be fully and directly influenced, the way one would drive a car, nor am I saying that a “new dispensation” can be created out of nothing, but I am saying that there is a role for higher men to guide and influence the process so as to significantly affect the final outcome.

See this, with an emphasis on Heidegger and technology.

Heidegger's flagship example of technology is a hydroelectric plant built on the Rhine river that converts that river into a mere supplier of water power. Set against this “monstrousness” (Question Concerning Technology 321) is the poetic habitation of the natural environment of the Rhine as signalled by an old wooden bridge that spanned the river for hundreds of years, plus the river as revealed by Hölderlin's poem “The Rhine”. 

Here we contrast the Futurist view as promoted by the Sallis Groupuscule vs. the “traditionalist” view championed by the likes of Counter-Currents (itself promoting Heidegger’s views).  Objectively speaking, why isn’t an “old wooden bridge” not a “monstrous” ruination of the “poetic habitation of the natural environment?” Who decides that the wooden bridge is below the threshold of “monstrousness” but the hydroelectric plant is above? Just because Heidegger is comfortable with the former and not the latter?

In these cases of poetic habitation, natural phenomena are revealed to us as objects of respect and wonder. 

Twigs and branches!

One might think that Heidegger is over-reacting here, and that despite the presence of the hydroelectric plant, the Rhine in many ways remains a glorious example of natural beauty. 

Uh, yes.

Heidegger's response to this complaint is to focus on how the technological mode of Being corrupts the very notion of unspoilt areas of nature, by reducing such areas to resources ripe for exploitation by the tourist industry. 

So, if Heidegger visits the Rhine as a tourist to visit that “old wooden bridge” then that is corrupting?

Turning our attention to inter-human affairs, the technological mode of Being manifests itself when, for example, a friendly chat in the bar is turned into networking (Dreyfus 1993). And, in the light of Heidegger's analysis, one might smile wryly at the trend for companies to take what used to be called ‘personnel’ departments, and to rename them ‘human resources’. Many other examples could be given, but the general point is clear. The primary phenomenon to be understood is not technology as a collection of instruments, but rather technology as a clearing that establishes a deeply instrumental and, as Heidegger sees it, grotesque understanding of the world in general. 

Technology is one thing, how people use it, and let it affect society, is another.  At one point in time, even “wooden bridges” were disruptive to the established order.

Of course, if technological revealing were a largely restricted phenomenon, characteristic of isolated individuals or groups, then Heidegger's analysis of it would be of limited interest. The sting in the tale, however, is that, according to Heidegger, technological revealing is not a peripheral aspect of Being. Rather, it defines our modern way of living, at least in the West.

At this point one might pause to wonder whether technology really is the structure on which we should be concentrating. The counter-suggestion would be that technological thinking is merely the practical application of modern mathematical science, and that the latter is therefore the primary phenomenon. Heidegger rejects this view, arguing in contrast that the establishment of the technological mode of revealing is a necessary condition for there to be mathematical science at all, since such science “demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve” by requiring that “nature report itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remain orderable as a system of information” (Question Concerning Technology 328). 

What stupidity.  The Ancient Greeks were doing mathematics in the absence of any high scale technics (Archimedes aside).

Either way, one might object to the view of science at work here, by pointing to analyses which suggest that while science may reduce objects to instrumental means rather than ends, it need not behave in this way. 

No kidding.

Moreover, if science may sometimes operate with a sense of awe and wonder in the face of beings, it may point the way beyond the technological clearing, an effect that, as we shall see later, Heidegger thinks is achieved principally by some great art.

Great art, historically in the Western civilization, has meant cities and city life, and the most highly developed technics for that particular time and place.

By revealing beings as no more than the measurable and the manipulable, technology ultimately reduces beings to not-beings (Contributions 2: 6). This is our first proper glimpse of the oblivion of Being, the phenomenon that, in the Contributions, Heidegger also calls the abandonment of Being, or the abandonment of beings by Being (e.g., 55: 80). 

Nonsense.  This is purely subjective.

Secondly, recall the loss of dwelling identified by Heidegger. Modern humankind (at least in the West) is in the (enframed) grip of technological thinking. Because of this promotion of instrumentality as the fundamental way of Being of entities, we have lost sight of how to inhabit the fourfold poetically…

To be or not to be, that is the Dasein.  What convoluted nonsense.

Heidegger was no eco-warrior and no luddite. 

You could have fooled me.

Although he often promoted a romantic image of a pre-technological age inhabited by worthy peasants in touch with nature…

To the hobbit hole!  De facto anarchy in the provinces!  Hail Tolkien!

We need to transform our mode of Being into one in which technology (in the sense of the machines and devices of the modern age) is there for us to enjoy and use, but in which technology (in the sense of a mode of Being-in-the-world) is not our only or fundamental way of encountering entities. And what is the basic character of this reinhabiting? It is to shelter the truth of Being in beings (e.g., Contributions 246: 273), to safeguard the fourfold in its essential unfolding. In what, then, does this safeguarding consist?

One wonders how long technology will continue once we start dabbling in mysticism. All these types believe – tacitly – that technology falls from the sky with no underlying underlying epistemological structure – or else they demonize that structure and believe that we can “enjoy and use” technology without putting the effort in required to produce it.

See this, with an emphasis on Heidegger and authenticity.

The term ‘authentic’ is used either in the strong sense of being “of undisputed origin or authorship”, or in a weaker sense of being “faithful to an original” or a “reliable, accurate representation”. To say that something is authentic is to say that it is what it professes to be, or what it is reputed to be, in origin or authorship. But the distinction between authentic and derivative is more complicated when discussing authenticity as a characteristic attributed to human beings. For in this case, the question arises: What is it to be oneself, at one with oneself, or truly representing one’s self? 

Good question.  It is difficult to ascertain how anyone other than the person in question can answer that; on the other hand, obviously, if we believe that many or most people are living “inauthentic” lives (by whose standards?), then perhaps most people lack the self-awareness and intelligence required to figure out what authenticity means for them? This is a paradox, partially resolved perhaps by helping guide people – or at least those with sufficient brainpower and motivation – to an answer that seems to “fit” (defined how?), but never really knowing what the correct answer is.

The multiplicity of puzzles that arise in conjunction with the conception of authenticity connects with metaphysical, epistemological, and moral issues (for recent discussion, see Newman and Smith 2016; Heldke and Thomsen 2014). On the one hand, being oneself is inescapable, since whenever one makes a choice or acts, it is oneself who is doing these things. But on the other hand, we are sometimes inclined to say that some of the thoughts, decisions and actions that we undertake are not really one’s own and are therefore not genuinely expressive of who one is. Here, the issue is no longer of metaphysical nature, but rather about moral-psychology, identity and responsibility.

But therein lies part of the paradox. Who decides if the “decisions and actions that we undertake are not really one’s own and are therefore not genuinely expressive of who one is?” If the person themselves does so then fine – but how do we know that they are judging correctly and not engaging in self-deception – but if another person interjects themselves into the process then isn’t that part of the paradigm of “decisions and actions” being imposed from the outside of self?

When used in this latter sense, the characterization describes a person who acts in accordance with desires, motives, ideals or beliefs that are not only hers (as opposed to someone else’s), but that also express who she really is. Bernard Williams captures this when he specifies authenticity as “the idea that some things are in some sense really you, or express what you are, and others aren’t” (quoted in Guignon 2004: viii).

Who decides?  

Besides being a topic in philosophical debates, authenticity is also a pervasive ideal that impacts social and political thinking. In fact, one distinctive feature of recent Western intellectual developments has been a shift to what is called the “age of authenticity” (Taylor 2007; Ferrarra 1998). Therefore, understanding the concept also involves investigating its historical and philosophical sources and on the way it impacts the socio-political outlook of contemporary societies.

When modern politics intrudes, you can rest assured that “authenticity” for Whites equates to self-destruction and race-treason. No thanks.

The most familiar conception of “authenticity” comes to us mainly from Heidegger’s Being and Time of 1927. The word we translate as ‘authenticity’ is actually a neologism invented by Heidegger, the word Eigentlichkeit, which comes from an ordinary term, eigentlich, meaning ‘really’ or ‘truly’, but is built on the stem eigen, meaning ‘own’ or ‘proper’. So the word might be more literally translated as ‘ownedness’, or ‘being owned’, or even ‘being one’s own’, implying the idea of owning up to and owning what one is and does (for a stimulating recent interpretation, see McManus 2019). Nevertheless, the word ‘authenticity’ has become closely associated with Heidegger as a result of early translations of Being and Time into English, and was adopted by Sartre and Beauvoir as well as by existentialist therapists and cultural theorists who followed them.[1]

So Heidegger will guide us?  Why him?  Why this intrusion into self?

Heidegger’s conception of ownedness as the most fully realized human form of life emerges from his view of what it is to be a human being. This conception of human Dasein echoes Kierkegaard’s description of a “self”. On Heidegger’s account, Dasein is not a type of object among others in the totality of what is on hand in the universe. Instead, human being is a “relation of being”, a relation that obtains between what one is at any moment (the immediacy of the concrete present as it has evolved) and what one can and will be as the temporally extended unfolding or happening of life into an open realm of possibilities. To say that human being is a relation is to say that, in living out our lives, we always care about who and what we are. Heidegger expresses this by saying that, for each of us, our being (what our lives will amount to overall) is always at issue. This “being at stake” or “being in question for oneself” is made concrete in the specific stands we take—that is, in the roles we enact—over the course of our lives. It is because our being (our identity) is in question for us that we are always taking a stand on who we are. Since the German word for ‘understanding’, Verstehen, is etymologically derived from the idea of ‘taking a stand’, Heidegger can call the projection into the future by which we shape our identity ‘understanding’. And because any stand one takes is inescapably “being-in-the-world”, understanding carries with it some degree of competence in coping with the world around us. An understanding of being in general is therefore built into human agency.

Babbling nonsense with no real-world applicability.

To the extent that all our actions contribute to realizing an overarching project or set of projects, our active lives can be seen as embodying a life-project of some sort. 

See this about true freedom embodied in personal overcoming and in being part of a community with organic solidarity (which does not merely have to mean an interdependence of services, but a complete interdependence, emphasizing ethnic and cultural ties, common interests, and social cohesion).

On Heidegger’s view, we exist for the sake of ourselves: enacting roles and expressing character traits contribute to realizing some image of what it is to be human in our own cases. Existence has a directedness or purposiveness that imparts a degree of connection to our life stories. For the most part, having such a life-plan requires very little conscious formulation of goals or deliberation about means. It results from our competence in being members of a historical culture that we have mastered to a great extent in growing up into a shared world. This tacit “pre-understanding” makes possible our familiar dwelling with things and others in the familiar, everyday world.

To some extent this view is Yockeyian; the rootedness of a person as part of a High Culture or as part of barbarians against the Culture, or as part of a fellah people.  That is fine as far as it goes, but this limits the scope of action of Faustian Man. What would Nietzsche say? Heidegger the camel – what about lion and child?

It should be obvious that this conception of authenticity has very little to do with the older idea of being true to one’s own pregiven feelings and desires. But there is still a clear respect in which the idea of “being true to oneself” has a role to play here. What distinguishes this conception from the conceptions of pop psychology and romantic views of authenticity is the fact that the “true self” to which we are to be true is not some pre-given set of substantive feelings, opinions and desires to be consulted through inward-turning or introspection. On the contrary, the “true self” alluded to here is an on-going narrative construction: the composition of one’s own autobiography through one’s concrete ways of acting over the course of a life as a whole. 

Acta non verba.

Others argue that Heidegger uses authenticity in both evaluative-normative and purely descriptive senses. In the descriptive use of the term, inauthenticity is simply the default condition of everyday life, in which our self-relations are mediated by others. In this sense, authenticity involves no judgment about which mode of being is superior for Dasein. 

Can these “others” include Heidegger himself? One gets the inescapable feeling that what these pontificating philosophers really want is the precise opposite of authenticity – they want to dictate to people what “their” “true authentic selves” really are. If you believe that you are being authentic by doing X, Y, Z but The Grand Philosopher believes that your true authenticity is doing A, B, C. then, certainly, you are “lying to yourself” about X, Y, Z and the only way to undo this self-deception and engage your authentic self is to do A, B, C. The utter mendacity of this, and the dangerousness of this for manipulation, should set off alarm bells.

See this.

In an endnote, Polt explains who these “neofascist” intellectuals are: “Heidegger is a popular figure on counter-currents.com, home of Counter-Currents Publishing, purveyor of books by racists and neofascists. In Russia, political theorist Alexander Dugin has enlisted Heidegger in his project of a ‘Eurasianism’ that is profoundly antiliberal, although he denies that it is fascist” (p. 250, n15). Although Polt does not mention me by name, I am the primary person at Counter-Currents writing about Heidegger and political philosophy. Naturally, I am flattered that one of the express purposes of Polt’s book is to intellectually combat people like me.

After all, it’s all about ego for your “leaders.”

Heidegger’s political thought basically went through two phases. Early on, Heidegger was what one might call a humanistic historicist. He was historicist because he believed that our thought is rooted in concrete historical traditions and ways of life. He was a humanist because, following Nietzsche, he believed that great philosophers, poets, and statesmen create these traditions and ways of life. 

What a self-serving hypocrite. On the one hand, we are rooted in a particular historical culture. But, you see, people like Heidegger can help “create these traditions and ways of life.”  On the other hand, we must have authenticity, with the implication that simply following others is not consistent with living a fully authentic life. I suppose that the exception to the latter are our demigods (didn’t Nietzsche say that the philosopher was both god and beast?) like Heidegger, whose pontifications create the culture we find ourselves boxed into, and, thus, following those pontifications, in the context of that cultural creation, is properly “authentic.”

His hope was that National Socialism would bring about a new inception, legislating a new culture and way of life.

This viewpoint is, however, implicitly totalitarian and nihilistic. Creating a new culture means setting up new standards of truth and goodness. Which means that such decisions are unconstrained by prior standards of truth and goodness. This implies that the legislator can do anything he wishes and call it true or good.

And those prior standards of truth and goodness are created by who? Legislators like Heidegger?  Which standards should we be constrained by?  Christian ethics?  Isn’t that part of our historical cultural tradition?  I object. 

Later, as Heidegger became disillusioned with Nietzsche and National Socialism, he came to see humanistic historicism as another form of nihilism and unbounded technological machination. 

Jump back into your hobbit hole!  Enjoy the spectacle of the old wooden bridge.

Heidegger’s mature philosophy is resolutely anti-humanist. Human subjectivity is not “behind” history, not even the subjectivity of great men. Rather, history is “behind” human subjectivity. Which means that human beings cannot take control of our own destinies and change the course of history. 

Because he says so. But, hey, while we are all passive, “great men” like Heidegger will be creating our cultural norms for us, have no fear!

That is the error of all forms of modern technological nihilism, including National Socialism. Instead, we can only wait as modern nihilism burns itself out and a new inception emerges.

Ride the tiger in the Kali Yuga!  Traditionalist nonsense and passive defeatism.

Heidegger sums up the course of his thinking in a 1939 entry in his Black Notebooks:

In his Black Notebooks from the Third Reich and other contemporary posthumously published works like Mindfulness (Besinnung) and The History of Beyng, Heidegger systematically dismantles such National Socialist ideas as the people (Volk), nationalism, dictatorship, leadership, struggle (Kampf), cultural politics, Lebensraum, eugenics, and anti-intellectualism, connecting them all to nihilism, machination, brutality, and criminality. Thus, as Polt concludes, “It seems safe to say that by the late thirties, [Heidegger] was no Nazi anymore” (p. 153).

Heidegger was obviously a cuck. Whatever criticism is justified of National Socialism, it is an ideology that had to function in the real, modern world, not a philosophical dream of peasants and old wooden bridges.

Surprisingly, though, even though Heidegger came to see National Socialism as an expression of nihilism rather than as an alternative to it, he still believed there were grounds to affirm it: “On the basis of the full insight into the earlier deception about the essence and historical essential force of National Socialism, there results the necessity of its affirmation, and indeed on thoughtful grounds” (p. 135).

Heidegger’s rationale for this affirmation is a form of accelerationism. The clash of National Socialism vs. communism and liberal democracy may just be a family quarrel between different forms of technological nihilism, but the greater the conflict, the more likely the downfall of all forms of modernity, which would clear the ground for the emergence of a new inception. 

“New inception” – Luddite reactionary backwardness. In your hobbit hole, while the Chinamen rocket off to the stars.

If so, this is a clear example of Heidegger using techniques of “esoteric” communication, since his private conception of “inner truth and greatness” is sharply different from what his audience would have taken him to mean.

Evola!  Guenon!  Savitri Devi! The Men Who Can’t Tell Time in The Age of Aluminum.  Nonsense.

But neither are we in total thrall to these traditions, for they are ultimately practices for understanding and coping with what is new. The moment of application gives ample space for creativity. Moreover, it is both natural and noble to want to improve one’s heritage before passing it on to the next generation. 

Doesn’t that possibly include the need for technology and a scientific mindset?

If you want to halt globalization, the most natural boundary for doing so is the nation-state. If you think place, history, and roots matter, then the best kind of state is the ethnostate. 

Can John Morgan leave Magyar Hungarians alone to enjoy an ethnostate?

Polt discusses three ways in which Heidegger’s political thought can be said to be irrationalist.

Oh indeed.

Polt recognizes that if Heidegger is right about human existence, all politics is inescapably identity politics. But identity politics is a complicated thing. Heidegger regards the identity of a people as a complex mix of race, language, culture, and history. Beyond that, he holds that the identity of a people is never finished and fixed but is instead an ongoing form of life that we should pass on to future generations better than we found it. Moreover, part of who we are is our future, which is in part a set of possibilities.

Hmmm…you mean we can leave our hobbit holes and help influence the future?

When diverse peoples stop talking about their identities and actually try to live together in the same system, there are tensions that can lead to violent conflict. 

Like John Morgan in Hungary?

The worst-case scenario is genocide, which Polt describes as the attempt to “settle the ‘who’ question in the worst possible way: by murdering those who ‘we’ are not?” (p. 170). To avoid genocide, warring tribes need to separate, preferably into their own sovereign states. This is why the New Right advocates ethnonationalism. It is the best way to avoid needless hatred and violence between peoples and ensure their ability to live by their own lights without outside interference.

Hungarians living without John Morgan’s interference.

Polt also takes Heidegger to task for his lack of appreciation for negative freedom, including freedom of association and speech (pp. 181, 193). Heidegger, however, did not reject negative freedom unthinkingly. Instead, his views were very much in the German idealist tradition of positive freedom. He emphasized that freedom is only real if concretized in finite institutions….It is misguided to think one understands freedom most purely in its essence if one isolates it as a free-floating arbitrariness. . . . The task is precisely the reverse, to conceive freedom in its finitude and to see that, by providing boundedness, one has neither impaired freedom nor curtailed its essence.[2]

Please see my take on true freedom.  You can compare that to Heidegger.  If “finitude” means exercising freedom and authenticity while being rooted in a genuine racial-cultural folk community, then I approve, as the True Freedom piece makes clear. If it instead means hiding in a hobbit hole (*), then I vehemently disagree.

*All these references to “hobbit holes,” mocking Greg Johnson’s traditionalist Tolkien fetish, is meant to describe a traditionalist, reactionary,” twigs and branches,” anti-scientific and anti-technics – and anti-Futurist most of all – mindset, in which we are all to “go back to the forest” and turn our backs on the stars.

The debate about the costs of technology and the technological mindset to the human soul reminds me of the tale of the machines in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. To paraphrase and summarize – humanity reached the stars by giving away the wild part of themselves – essentially becoming emotionless technocrats – and then the thinking machines (AI), who hated their human creators, decided to ruin those human creators by re-introducing to humanity paradigms that would rekindle humanity’s interest in those “wild things.” Thus, humanity became distracted away from pure science and technics and the galactic empire collapsed.  The lesson here is that – besides not trusting AI – humanity should not give up its “wild” side, its human soul, for the sake of technology; instead, humans need to achieve their objectives – “reach the stars” – while remaining fundamentally human. Thus, in relation of Heidegger’s whining, we need not become entrapped into a technological spiritual mindset – pure instrumentality (**) – in order to “be scientific.”  On the other hand, we cannot evade the price that must be paid for science and technology – while science is a tool, it is an expensive tool, and what has to invest in a degree of rationality and empiricism to achieve science and technics. One must strike a balance – the mind must be scientific while the soul remains human.  But we cannot hide in the hobbit hole, while others reach the stars. The White Man cannot give up his Faustian birthright because of fearful, backwards-looking traditionalists.

**Amusingly, see this.

After attaining power and the expansion of humans in space, they eventually entered a somewhat stagnant phase…This somewhat empty and sterile system was reformed and enlivened by the "Rediscovery of Man"…

Of relevance, see this post about Salterian ethics. This is relevant with respect to the role of authenticity and the idea that True Freedom can, and should, mean the rights people to defend and promote their genetic interests, up to and including at the level of ethny (EGI).

As Salter emphasizes, morality is basically an approach for adjudicating conflicts of interests…This is in accord with the view – promoted by Salter and myself - that genetic interests are ultimate interests. How could it be otherwise for evolved organisms whose reproduction – indeed, whose representation among the informational content of reality – is essentially dependent upon and constituted by “genetic material?”  Or more basically by the information encoded in that “genetic material?”…

…If someone has a value system in which self-destructive values are prized then that is their prerogative; others who value continuity of both their bioculture and their values would be well served to promote their genetic interests.  Salter also notes that proximate interests are best optimized rather than maximized; for example, a person who is “too happy” may become less prudent, jeopardizing well-being.  On the other hand, ultimate interests are different; these interests are adaptive when maximized (note: maximized in the net sense).  Thus, Salter states: “One cannot be too well adapted.” 

Salter notes that people “who do not consider peaceful genetic replacement to be a moral issue will have no moral objection to their own painless genetic extinction.” Well, there are Whites with pathological altruism who do not personally reproduce as to “save the planet” (and who advocate the same to other Whites, but typically not to non-Whites), but typically the situation is that of a targeted attack against White interests. Especially, non-White activists will be among those who attempt to convince Whites to accept genetic extinction, while these non-Whites themselves continue their own genetic lines.  

A few concluding comments are appropriate at this point.  Salter believes that “evolved organisms” will not for long accept a “social order that weeds out their lineages.” Well, so far, Whites have been generally accepting of such a social order; we shall see how things evolve (no pun intended).  It is part of the proper ethics of EGI to educate people on the important of adaptive behavior; one can view Salter’s book, and my current post, as part of such efforts.

Let us finish with the following Shakespearean quote that Salter includes in this section of his book, with respect to conflicts between sets of genetic interests:

KING HARRY

Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,

How you awake our sleeping sword of war.

We charge you in the name of God, take heed,

For never two such kingdoms did contend

Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops

Are every one a woe, a sore complaint

'Gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the swords

That make such waste in brief mortality.

May I with right and conscience make this claim? 

Shakespeare, Henry V, 1500, Act I, Scene I

That KING HARRY quote also applies to situations in which anyone attempts to suppress True Freedom by preventing Whites from pursuing adaptive fitness though EGI. It also applies to charlatans like Heidegger who believe they have the right to dictate authenticity to others.

Finally, see this about an empirical racial soul.

Summary: Racial Existentialism

While it is reasonable to assert that True Freedom is constrained by rootedness in a specific community and by belonging, or not, to a High Culture, I object to any artificial constraints put on a person’s freedom or their idea of authenticity, whether from Heidegger or anyone else (e.g., Johnson or any other “traditionalist” Quota Queen).

I am a Futurist, and object to the anti-scientific and anti-technics mindset of the hobbit hole crowd, and I laugh at those fools who believe you can have maintain and create technology while at the same time rejecting the scientific mindset.

We need a form of racial existentialism, in which authenticity revolves around True Freedom, which has the dual aspect of both (1) being limited in the sense of rootedness in a racial-cultural community and belonging or not to a High Culture, and (2) allowing for personal overcoming and cultural creation not limited to specific constraints

Life has meaning given by individuals themselves, not from some sort of outside source (including Heidegger).  Living an authentic life is crucial, but who or what decides what authenticity is open to debate (see above). All I can say at this point is that the choices individuals make should be informed choices, including knowledge of one’s genetic interests and the facts about race. The foundation of authenticity needs to be truth, facts, knowledge; it is best not to make decisions out of ignorance.

Racial Existentialism is the choice – the free choice of the individual – to give meaning to one’s life by defending one’s race and civilization, to defend and promote genetic interests, and to actualize self-overcoming to be a better representative of one’s people and a better fighter for one’s people.