The Winter of Spengler’s Discontent

The decline of Spengler: reconsidering High Cultures.

It has been decades since I last tackled Oswald Spengler, and it seemed time to refresh my understanding of his major work.  Upon the advice of a Spengler expert (and following the Pareto Principle), I acquired the abridged edition of The Decline of the West.

First, a few words about Spengler’s writing in this book, which I found to be terrible: like Heidegger, overly dense and sometimes nearly incomprehensible in the pompous old school German style (in contrast, Nietzsche, particularly apart from Zarathustra, was exceedingly comprehensible and easily understandable).  Contrary to all of Spengler’s breathless fans, I did not find his magnum opus to be very well written.  It’s a terribly boring, turgid compilation of rambling prose.  I can only imagine the full-scale version is worse (and if memory serves, it was). Another point is that Spengler’s deconstructivism is highly annoying to the more empiricist among us, his idea that Nature is a function of a particular culture.  Well (and the same applies to some of Yockey’s [plagiarized] rambling on the subject), for some cultures, Nature apparently is a more accurate “function” of reality than for others, and this more accurate representation of objective reality has real world consequences that cannot be evaded.

Thus, Spengler’s rambling on “Nature Knowledge” can be for the most part safely ignored.  Spengler laughably wrote: “Every atomic theory, therefore, is a myth, and not an experience.”  Yes, tell that to the Japanese of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who encountered the myth – not the experience, oh no! – of being blasted by atom bombs.  Spengler’s comments about the “uranium atom” are particularly ludicrous in hindsight. I have to say: Spengler was an idiot (*).

The problem with Spengler (and Yockey) and science is that the Spenglerian view could be tenable if science was only a purely abstract phenomenon, with no practical real world consequences.  Unfortunately, for Spengler, science leads to technics, and the outcome of technics (contra Yockey) is directly related to the reality behind the science.  In the absence of real world consequences, in the absence of technics, the Spenglerians can pretend that there is no objective difference between, say, Classical or Egyptian physics on the one hand, and Faustian physics on the other. However, the former, if followed to technics, will not lead to methods that can obliterate cities, shatter mountains, and sink islands; while the latter can, and has.  Facts are facts. “Theory is working hypothesis…” according to Spengler’s formulation of Faustian technics, but that can be just as easily reversed: the working hypothesis is based upon theory.  Without scientific theory, practical technics is mere makeshift tinkering.

The sections “Race is Style” and “People and Nation” are of course relevant from a racial nationalist perspective, and reflects Spengler’s anti-scientific stupidity, this time about biological race.  Those of you familiar with Yockey’s wrong-headed assertions on this topic will see all the same in Spengler’s work (from which Yockey lifted his assertions).  This has been critiqued by many – from Revilo Oliver to myself – and it is not necessary to rehash all of the arguments against the Spenglerian (Boasian) deconstructivist attitudes toward biological race.  We can just shake our heads sadly about Spengler’s racial fantasies – that is as absurd as that of any hysterical leftist SJW race-denier – and move on to other issues.

The comments by Spengler (and others) about the Russian soul and Russian character, and its “non-Faustian” nature (‘the horizontal expansive plain…the plain, the plain….”) are interesting, and may well have some validity (as a close look at Russian literature informs us, to some degree).  But this can all be taken too far.  With the benefit of hindsight obviously not available to Spengler himself – but which is just as obviously available to modern-day Spenglerians – we look at the Russian interest in space exploration, particularly during the Soviet period, and ask – was that merely just for political propaganda purposes?  The answer is not quite clear.  There are differences between cultures, yes, but when there is an underlying racial affinity, then the different cultures are not quite orthogonal to each other.  And the same principle applies to the Classical-Faustian distinction as well. Spengler would argue that the Classical and Faustian are as different from each other than either are to, say, the Chinese, Indian, or Egyptian.  I think that’s nonsense, and the same applies to Russian-Faustian/Western.  There are differences and then there are DIFFERENCES.  Being more objective about Spengler’s ideas than Spengler himself, I hope the “differences between differences” are obvious.

The section on “State and History” was actually readable and made some valid points, but I disagree with Spenglerian inevitability, and I believe he draws the line of the Fellah stage too early in some historical cases. The high point of the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana – was a historyless desert?  Spengler, I think, became too enamored with his own theories (or nonsense, if you want to be harsh).  The “Philosophy of Politics” section is also readable, with some useful points, but also has, obviously, areas of profound disagreement between Spengler and reality.  The idea that the “born statesman” has – or should have - no convictions, should be a completely amoral actor dealing with facts and effects with no ideology affecting their actions - that I reject. Who is or is not a “born statesmen?”  The examples Spengler gives are ludicrous given his assertion. Sulla, Robespierre, Bismarck, and Pitt – they all acted with no underlying ideology or conviction influencing their actions?  I will say his comments about the value of a “tradition” in politics, statesmanship, in fact in any manifestation or organized human activity (comments mirrored by Yockey), are basically sound. Again, in reading Spengler, there are some diamonds in the piles of dirt and dung; one has to dig them out and treasure them.  However, the diamond-to-dung ratio is not enough to grant Spengler the acclaim as a “great writer.” While Spengler and his ideas have worth, whether or not we agree with all of them, I wonder if he may not be one of the most over-rated writers in history.

Those are mere details however.  Important details, but not the fundamental, the main thesis.  So, what about the main thesis of his work?  The overall idea of cyclical history?  Yockey’s lifting of that idea in his own work?  Rereading Spengler’s major thesis hasn’t changed my mind about it in any major way, but there are some further points to make.

To begin with, I do believe that Spengler was on to something; his most fundamental observations about the cyclical nature of High Cultures, in their broadest sense, have validity.  I reject his self-assured assertions about inevitability and his smug and snide pontification about the emptiness of current and future cultural possibilities, as well as his complete lack of self-awareness of the effects of his fundamental observation on the ability of future generations to interfere with what was previously a completely unguided historical process.  By analogy, before the germ theory of infectious disease was asserted, and then proven as fact, man was for the most part helpless against the onslaught of microbes, apart from the natural and (by conscious thought) unguided processes of the human immune system.  After the discovery of the germ-disease link, we have preventive and therapeutic interventions against these diseases.  Furthering this analogy, we can say that before Spengler, man was helpless in the face of historical inevitability; after Spengler and his discovery, the situation is changed.

Another point: being more familiar with Yockey’s work than with Spengler’s, I note how much Yockey plagiarized from Spengler.  Everyone talks about Yockey plagiarizing Carl Schmitt, and that Spengler “inspired” Yockey  - well, if by “inspired” you mean ruthlessly copy than, yes, Yockey was very “inspired.”  However, I do not say that to disparage Yockey or Imperium, the work which contains most of the plagiarism in question.  Yockey was a political polemicist, and Imperium was meant to be a thoroughly political work, sort of a Communist Manifesto for fascists, it wasn’t meant as a scholarly work and Yockey made no pretense of any original thought in that book. So, I just note for the record that the plagiarism took place.  I also note that, in a real sense, it is good that the plagiarism did take place, because Imperium is much more readable, much more digestible, than Spengler’s ponderous work, which is, as stated above, a caricature of “heavy” self-indulgent pedantic German scholarship.  Spengler’s views on (biological) race, as derived from his statements in this book, were as wrong-headed as Yockey’s regurgitation of them.  But enough of that; it is a side-issue at this time, and has been already discussed, by myself and (many) others, with respect to Imperium.

Let’s get back to Spengler’s content, and some of my objections alluded to above.  Thus, as far as content goes, my “take” on it remains the same; I agree with much but I disagree with much as well, particularly the “pessimistic” inevitability of it, and the smug arrogance in suggesting, or implying, that disagreement with that aspect of the work implies some sort of mental weakness, delusion, or cowardice on the part of the reader.  Spengler himself suggests that he “truth” of the book is a “truth” for him, a “truth” for a particular Culture in a particular time, and should not necessarily be viewed as an absolute truth in any or every sense (indeed, it everything from science to mathematics is, according to Spengler, formed by the Culture which creates it, and is thus no absolute in any universal sense, then we can quote Pilate ‘“what is truth?”).  Therefore, my “truth” in the current year leads me to conclusions different from Spengler; one can again assert that Spengler himself, by writing the book and outlining he problem, himself undermined his assertion of inevitability, since know we can understand the trajectories of Cultures and, possibly, how to affect those trajectories.

I’ll have more to say about that shortly.

One thing about re-reading the book that did influence me – more of a minor point – is that I’m now more in agreement (although not totally in agreement) with Spengler that the Classical Culture was quite different from out Western Faustian one.  There was always a sense of a different style, a different mindset, a different worldview, but The Decline of the West, and the evidence Spengler presents, helps clarify the Classical-Faustian distinction and brings it into stark relief.  So, yes, there’s more to that issue than I previously thought.  However, it doesn’t’ change the fact that both the Classical and the Faustian (or Western) High Cultures came into being in Europe, created by Europeans, and, therefore, if we accept one aspect of Spenglerian inevitability – the actual “decline of the West” – and indeed we appear to be ahead of schedule, well into Winter, then we can discard other aspects of inevitability and assert that Europe and Europeans are well capable of creating other High Cultures.

So, I will say that Spengler exaggerates the Classical-Faustian divide, even though I’m a bit more supportive of his views on that than before.  There is an intermediate ground between saying the two Cultures are completely and utterly distinct entities with absolutely no connection and saying that the Faustian is merely an outgrowth of the Classical.  On a side note, as a result of re-reading Spengler, I’m now studying the last period of the Western Roman Empire, from Adrianople to Odoacer, to (1) examine the parallels to our own day, (2) discern the “breaking point” where the last vestiges of the Classical World died out (What happened? How?  What came after, what was the result?), and (3) to re-examine stupid “movement” dogma on how the later Empire was becoming ever more decadent as a result of racial changes (if anything, the later Empire was more moral than before).

That is related to an important deficit in the work of Spengler that I have read.  He describes the lifecycle of High Cultures, but never really dissects why the cultures inevitably (or so he says) move from Culture to Civilization to Fellahdom.  What actually are the mechanistic causes of Spring to Summer to Fall to Winter?  I guess that Spengler (and Yockey) would just say that it is what it is, that the Culture is life an organism that grows old and dies.  The problem is that this analogy is just that, an analogy.  A Culture is composed of living organisms, humans, but is itself not alive. And esoteric rambling about a “cosmic beat” explains nothing.  If ones buys into the Spenglerian premise, then some rigorous analysis as to why High Cultures progress in particular ways is necessary.  We need an anatomical and molecular analysis of the “living organism” of the High Culture. Does Frost’s genetic pacification play a role? The cycle, noted by Hamilton, of barbarian invasions, the influx of altruism genes, followed by the aging of the civilization at which point fresh barbarian genes are required to spark a renaissance in the depleted fellhahs?  The moral decay that occurs with too much luxury, too much wealth, too much power?  A form of memetic exhaustion?  

By analogy to the memetic exhaustion hypothesis, consider successful television shows.  Although a few of these have been unusually very long lasting – but even these eventually do go off the air – the vast majority follow a trajectory of a lifespan of, say, half-a-dozen years or so.  In the first season of a successful show, there is freshness and novelty, experimentation with plotlines and characters, some unevenness, but excitement and the growth of a fan base.  Then the show reaches a crest wave of success – compelling storylines, solid character development, a strong fan base. This is followed by a bit of stagnation, attempts are made to shake things up, introducing new characters, altering the basic storyline, which may well cause a secondary, shorter spike in interest (Caesarism?), followed by “jumping the shark,” actors leaving the show, stale and repetitious stories, flat characters, a loss of interest of the fan base, decline, and eventual cancellation.  At some point, the show exhausts the memetic possibilities of its setting, characters, and fundamental storyline, and the “magic” is lost.  Does a Culture likewise exhaust all the possibilities of its actualization?  But unlike a TV show, where the station and the show writers (and the fans and reviewers) are consciously following the show’s trajectory and ratings, a High Culture is, or has been, independent of such analysis and direction.  In what way does memetic exhaustion promote the next phase of development?  Further, given Spengler’s identification of the cycle, does this now mean that a High Culture can be tracked analogous to a defined cultural artifact, like a TV show?  If so, how?  Can an elite consciously and directly alter a culture’s direction?  Can they “cancel” it and create a new one?  These are questions that require the rigorous analysis of mechanism previously stated as being required.

What about moving forward?

I maintain that those of us in the interregnum between High Cultures have the power to shape the next High Culture to come, to plant the seed, to choose the specific seed to plant, to nurture it as it grows up toward the sun.  Analogous to lucid dreaming, in our awareness of the Spenglerian thesis – to the extent that it is true – we can guide what was in the past an unconscious and organic flowering, speed it up, and mold it in particular directions.  Obviously, the extent of this control is limited; one cannot “preplan” an entire High Culture in advance, but one can influence its direction, and get it jumpstarted. Imagine some asteroid or comet hurtling toward Earth; if you can deflect it just a small bit, when it is far enough away, that small deflection will become amplified over time, over the long distances it travels at great speeds, and it would them miss the Earth by a healthy margin.  Giving a “nudge” in the right direction at the very beginning of a High Culture’s flowering can be enough, over time, to create a path along which it will develop.  The exact outcome, the precise path, cannot be determined or even precisely predicted, but the general direction, the overall constraints of a set of possible paths, I believe can be determined and predicted.  You might not be able to pinpoint a direction to the precision of saying, “we’re going to Boston” but perhaps to the extent of “we are going to the Northeast United States.”  And that would be enough.

In any case, imagine a person, or group of people, and here I mean our people, who today or tomorrow (broadly defined) wish to create cultural artifacts.  And this culture creation can be of our current Western Faustian High Culture or some new one to come.  Very well.  Should they refrain from doing so simply because Spengler insisted that the time of culture was over, and we should now be concerned only with technics and conquest?  When Spenglerism takes itself too seriously, it descends into absurdity.  It is best thought of as possible guidance, as broad outlines, as description – but not any sort of definitive absolute prescription.

By the way, having a European Imperium – which Spenglerians would say is a marker of late Civilization – is not in my opinion in any way incompatible with the creation of a new High Culture.  After all, some Spenglerians are fond of telling us that a new High Culture is likely to come from Russia, and Russia is, as many Duginite Russian “nationalists” like to tell us, an empire.  So massive states, including multiethnic empires, can very well be the wellsprings of new cultures.  We shouldn’t confuse surface political forms with the underlying cultural realities.

Speaking of Russia, another part of Spengler’s work that I found reasonably well argued and somewhat convincing (as well as fairly novel) is his idea of applying the concept of pseudomorphosis to human populations. In particular, one cannot really dispute some of his points about the Magian and Russian cultures in this regard, but when he says that Antony should have won at Actium – what nonsense is that?  So, that Rome should have become more tainted with Near Eastern cults and ideas even more than it was?  What’s the opposite of pseudomorphosis – where a Civilization becomes memetically conquered by a meme originating from a young Culture?  How did the memetic virus of Christianity infect the West?  Wouldn’t it have been worse if Actium was won by the East?  When Spengler writes of “syncretism” he begins to touch upon this reversal, which eventually goes in both directions (and as Type I “movement” apologists for Christianity like to tell us, that religion was eventually “Germanized” in the West).

Speaking of Christianity, Spengler’s comments about Jesus are interesting, but in my opinion too naive and too positive.  Yes, the meeting between Jesus and Pontius Pilate was world historical and meaningful; however, I view it from the Pilate perspective rather than, as Spengler does, the Jesus perspective.  Spengler takes his own view too seriously in the sense that – and the Antony-Actium thing fits here – and he seems to think that we all need to look from the viewpoint of “what was best for the new Magian High Culture?”  Personally, I could care less – I care about – only care about – those High Cultures of racially European origin (Classical, Faustian, Russian, and what comes next for the West).  Let the Magians worry about the Magian.  What? The poor little NECs were suppressed by the Classical?  Too bad. Who cares about them?  Spengler rightfully outlines how alien the Magian worldview is from the Faustian; thus, why should Faustian peoples care about Magians or follow a Magian religion like Christianity?

Spengler’s basic, fundamental thesis is novel and powerful: the idea of a series of High Cultures, moving in parallel with similar life morphologies.  But he went too far, arrogantly casting his idea with the aura of rigid inevitability – neglecting that the very act of identifying and evaluating the phenomenon, and doing so as part of a history-obsessed Faustian High Culture, forever destroyed a basic prerequisite of the phenomenon’s previous record of repeatability; i.e., that it was unknown and ahistorical.  Ironically, Spengler’s own observations are a major reason why the patterns he observed are no longer inevitable, or, perhaps better said no longer immune from intentional manipulation and control.  When the process was unknown, unidentified, and occurring in the background independent of direct human perception, it was beyond control, once identified and classified, that no longer necessarily holds.  

Let’s reconsider the analogy I made above, about the discovery of the germ theory of disease.  Before discovery, there was inevitability of certain events; with vaccination, that no longer holds.  Smallpox epidemics are no longer inevitable.  Even if the decline of the West (which has already occurred) is not stoppable, the idea that rollover to the next European High Culture is beyond control has been refuted by the knowledge gained by Spengler’s own analysis.  Spengler himself is responsible for eliminating the clockwork inevitability of his system.  What kind of “Fellah” status can a people really have once they – or at least their intellectual elites – are aware of Spenglerism?  Is a “Fellah” aware of their “Fellahsm” really “Fellah” anymore?  Or is that an oxymoron?  The Spenglerian Cycle can occur in its previously manifested form only when its actors – human actors in various cultures and civilizations and post-civilizations – are not consciously aware of its workings.  Once aware, the illusion of inevitability fades, once aware, and awareness manifested in those with a will to power, the knowledge becomes a tool and the Cycle becomes amenable to manipulation and direction.  Spengler’s work was based on the analysis of High Cultures that were to a very basic extent unaware of their own existence in these terms, unable to look at themselves objectively from “outside.”  That is no longer the case.

And if Spengler’s main thesis is flawed by its own self-realization, what can one say about his side ideas?  Those, particularly dealing with science, are absolute hogwash.  In that sense, Spengler is over-rated, never mind his poor writing, including his horrifically turgid style.  Yockey may have been offended by this “blasphemy” against his idol – “The Philosopher of History” – but it is nevertheless warranted.

Do I recommend The Decline of the West to the reader?  No.  As per the Pareto Principle, just read Imperium, which will take 20% of your effort and give you 80% of Spenglerism.

Notes:

*A particularly retarded footnote: “And it may be asserted that the downright faith that Haeckel, for example, pins to the names atom, matter, energy, is not essentially different from the fetishism of Neanderthal Man.”

Yeah, that’s great Oswald, you pompous semi-Jewish purveyor of ponderous Teutonic rumblings.  Too bad this idiot wasn’t around in the 1950s; they could have tied him to the Castle Bravo thermonuclear device and he could have experienced the “downright faith” that what he was about to experience was just the subjective interpretation of the Faustian High Culture.  Oswald would have been deconstructed indeed!

And for those who wish to take the Yockeyian line that technics is separate from scientific theory - that is nonsense.  The technics of nuclear power or GPS systems require an understanding of the underlying physics; the technics of CRISPR requires an understanding of the biological principles involved.  Can you train someone to use those technics, at a low level, without understanding the science?  Of course you can, but what’s the point?  Someone can read a history book without knowing Spengler, someone can fix a car engine without knowing about internal combustion.  But you cannot construct, refine, improve, or replace with something superior a technic without knowing the principles behind it. Read up on the difficulties nations had in figuring out how to get thermonuclear weapons to work (and, no, it’s not that you stick a tank of hydrogen behind an atom bomb) and you’ll understand how integral theory is for getting the technics to work and keep working.  It doesn’t take an understanding of nuclear physics to drop the bomb; however, it does require such an understanding to invent the bomb to begin with.

Further:

I can’t help notice that the buffoon Chad Crowley cites Spengler to support some of his viewpoints, even though Spengler’s fundamental thesis was that ALL High Cultures have an innate tendency to travel along the same socio-economic-politico-religious trajectory; the case of Rome is not unique, and “racial degeneration” by no means needs to be invoked to explain any of the broader changes that, according to Spengler, were destined to occur there as in any other culture he studied.

Further Development of Avant Garde Memes Required

Avant garde politics, racialism, and science?

An introduction.

Crude ethnic stereotyping may lead one to conclude that an emphasis on art, culture, and aesthetics in the creation of fascist ideology was (and is) a particularly “French” phenomenon. Of course, other fascist movements were concerned with these issues, sometimes to a significant extent, but none of them incorporated such memes into the core of the political thinking as did French fascist thinkers. Indeed, the cultural-aesthetic emphasis of the French strain of fascism is a breath of fresh air after immersion in the more focused political thought of the Italian Fascists and the racialist ideals of the German National Socialists.  

In fact, all three areas of focus – cultural-aesthetic, political, and racialist – are required for a complete memetic complex to promote fascistic ideals. As a biological reductionist, I would emphasize the racialist first of all, but doing so with respect to modern genetic science rather than the sort of quackery that passed as “racial science” under the Nazis. However, biological racialism by itself is not enough. Without an edifice of political and cultural-aesthetic memes, the foundation of ultimate interests will go nowhere.

Advocating avant garde memes should not be construed as some sort of pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, “artsy wine-and-cheese” mindset, but rather a fundamental appreciation of the need to break with old ways – ways that are proven failures – and experiment with fresh approaches to the problems of race and civilization.  Therefore, we should advocate avant garde approaches not only for art/culture, but, equally so, in politics, for our view if race, and, to the extent possible, in science.  It is too easy to fall back into bad habits, whether these be artistic, political, racial, or scientific. True enough, new doesn’t always mean best or right (this is where I disagree with the dogmatic futurists – extreme dogmatism should be viewed skeptically*), but we won’t know unless it is tried. We are all familiar with avant garde art (which means, perhaps, that now even newer forms require experimentation), but the precise manner in which avant garde politics, racialism, and science will be actualized remains to be determined.

 *I don’t say that dogmatically.

Suprahumanism Book Review

Book Review: Suprahumanism, by Daniel Forrest

Given my interests in topics covered in my Nietzsche’s Coming God book review, as well as my Overman High Culture essay, I thought it useful to take a look at Daniel Forrest’s new book, Suprahumanism.

The concept of Suprahumanism is defined by the author based on the following tenets: aristocratic conception of human individuals, the importance of honor, a heroic attitude toward the challenges of life, exalting this world and not some mystical afterlife or “world beyond,” strength and beauty and health, and the fusion of morality and aesthetics. The author notes that the European mind and soul is Faustian, it wants to know everything, is interested in everything, and wants to grasp the reality of everything.  This contrasts to the Church’s “thou shalt not know,” the promotion of ignorance and weakness, the “lesson” that man was ejected from “paradise” for “eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge.”  Thus one contrasts Suprahumanist ethics with those of Christianity. The author’s negative view of Christianity is, in my opinion, a positive.  He contrasts ethnocentric Judaism and universalist Christianity:

Judaism is a religion for survival in a multicultural society. It is a religion governing the behavior of a Jewish minority in the presence of a non-Jewish majority. Christianity, on the other hand, is a religion for governing the behavior of Christians in a homogenous society. In a multicultural society it becomes suicidal.

Perhaps, the paradigm suggested here is better explained as the attempt by Jews to construct Diaspora societal niches that they are comfortable in – multiracial, multicultural societies – that, at the same time, are destructive to White Gentiles.

The author does a good job explaining the self-sacrificial guilt complex exhibited by Whites, in that it is considered a moral good, and an alleviation of guilt, to favor alien interests over their own, while sin and guilt is exemplified by the “horror” of Whites actively pursuing White interests.  The author also summarizes the Suprahumanist indictment of basic Christian doctrine: Christianity exalts weakness and abhors strength, and would advocate against the weak becoming strong: after all, the meek and weak “shall inherit the earth.”  Suprahumanism, on the other hand, exalts strength and overcoming and is thus incompatible with Christianity.

There are those who insist that Christianity was not a problem for the White man until very recently, and in fact, traditional Christianity served Whites well as a foundation for Western civilization. Forrest, in contrast, argues that “traditional Christianity” was an amalgam of the original Paulian Christianity mixed with elements of paganism and infused with Germanic dynamism after the conversion of Northern Europe. This chimeric memetic construct was held together by Faith and Belief, but with the “death of God” due to Science and Rationalism, all that is left of Christianity is its secular core of egalitarianism and universalist (pathological) altruism.  Thus, the West today is morally and spiritually bankrupt, the Pope promotes and celebrates the Third World invasion of the West, and Whites have no moral, memetic defenses against multiculturalism and degeneracy.  Ironically, many modern trends opposed by the Church – for example, gay marriage – derive from the very egalitarianism and tolerance that forms the basis of the fundamental Christian doctrine. After all, if we are all really the same before God, then why is a male-female pair any more or less legitimate than male-male or female-female?  Or we can dispense with such classifications altogether, claim that “gender is a social construct,” and celebrate ever more bizarre forms of sexual debauchery.

My view is, and has been, that those who believe that traditional Christianity can be revived and serve as a pro-White foundation need to show us that it can be done.  They need to do it, they themselves.  It is always curious when they assert that non-believers – secular atheists or Asatru pagans – must renounce their own beliefs to help “rebuild the faith of our forefathers.”  No, my friends, if you think it is a good idea to reverse history and revive a dead Middle Eastern religion, then you, and only you, must be the ones to do it, and then demonstrate to the rest of us how so very important it all is for White survival. The rest of us have better things to do, thank you very much.

A la Krebs, the author makes a distinction between a bad “Western” civilization and a proper “European” civilization, classifying today’s degenerate multiracial globalism as the end product of the West. I’ve never particularly liked that meme, which conflates the Faustian High Culture of the West with the Judaized multiracial nightmare of today.  I see those as two very different things.  However, I’ve never advocated making the same error as the Christo-Racialists and demanding a return to the dead past.  Acknowledging that the West has been buried under a deluge of yarmulkes (metaphorically speaking), it’s time to look to the future, the Overman High Culture, which can be viewed as being consistent with the Suprahumanist worldview.  Indeed, Forrest believes that European Man is at a crossroads, the old world that began with the Neolithic Revolution and the rise of the Indo-Europeans (however defined), and lasted until Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “death of God,” is at its end.  How we deal with this “new World” will decide whether we move in the direction of the Last Man or the Overman.

Forrest views Wagner and Nietzsche as the twin pillars of Suprahumanism, these two 19th century Germans who started as friends and allies and ended as enemies.  Wagner, according to Forrest, represents the artistic pillar of Suprahumanism, and, Nietzsche, the philosophical pillar of that doctrine.  The current System, according to Forrest, has no inner meaning, no overarching goal, other than its own maintenance and expansion.  In this he is undoubtedly correct: the System has no positive outlook, no “Faustian goal,” no “shining city on a hill” to which is strives, but instead generates chaos, filth, and degeneracy. With respect to what should be a proper goal, the author presents a synthesis of speeches by George Bernard Shaw (1) on the ascent to Godhood by humanity, promoting the organizing essence of the universe to fulfill a higher purpose, to dedicate oneself to this higher purpose in a truly disinterested fashion, independent of self-centered personal needs and objectives. This idea Shaw – and by extension the author – conceives as true religion, not worshipping a manufactured sky-god, but obeying the will of the universe, so to speak, by humans becoming gods themselves.  This is consistent with William Pierce’s “cosmotheism” and is also consistent with my proposed Overman High Culture. Thus, the author defines history as:

…a battlefield on which groups of men confront one another and fight under the colours of an image/ideal they have themselves assumed, and to which they intend to conform – thus realising and overcoming themselves. 

Another point: importantly, from my perspective, the author has a pan-European focus, which I approve of.  For example, toward the beginning of the book, we read:

The one great goal toward which European foreign policy should strive is the development of a worldwide community – transcending present geographical nationalism – in which all men and women of European blood and culture will be part. The replacement of a parochial outlook with European world solidarity and a final elimination of fratricidal war, would count among the enormous benefits of such a development.

Quite right. I have discussed this issue many times in many different fora, and need not get into it again, other than say there are two types of activists who have problems with this ideal. The first are well-meaning folks who are well disposed to other Europeans, but fear that pan-European solidarity would somehow damage the narrow particularisms they value, and dilute the uniqueness of their specific ingroup, perhaps even leading to a destructive panmixia.  These types can be reasoned with; they need to be reassured that the type of pan-Europeanism we advocate includes preservation of the ethnic and subracial types that make up the European family of peoples. The other type of activist, however, is one who either simply does not care about other Europeans in any way whatsoever, or is actually hostile to them. This latter type is part of the problem and not part of the solution, they are “them” and not “us,” and they are no more “on our side” than is the most deranged multiracialist. Forrest summarizes his views on this topic by writing a defense of a pan-European “higher patriotism” which proclaims:

“I am a European and therefore the heir of an ancient culture which has civilized the entire world.” Only then will a united Europe dominate the world, as is its birthright.

I also am glad to see that the author embraces technology and the role of science and technics, properly harnessed to European Man’s will, in helping us achieve Godhood.  The author rejects the neoprimitive advocates, from both Right and Left, of “degrowth” – what I would call the cult of “living in the woods eating twigs and branches.”  In this sense, the author is Futurist, rather than exhibiting the more traditionalist tendencies inherent in other parts of the book. The author also correctly notes that economic–obsessed capitalism and the free market will never properly invest in the sort of paradigm-shifting, cutting-edge basic research and “breakthrough technologies” required for “civilizational projects.”  The free market is short-sighted, it is “structurally incapable” of making the grand decisions necessary to advance the human species.  It cares for nothing except to increase the yield for the shareholders and enhance profits regardless of the cost to human progress.  The author also pokes a hole in environmentalism and ecologicalism, for failing to accept that humans – as evolved animals – have as much right to interact with the environment as do “seals and penguins.”  The author does note, however, that with our rights come responsibilities – we have the power to harm the environment; thus, we must protect it for our patrimony.  Here, a properly harnessed technology will be a benefit; thus, in the long run, the solution to environmental problems is more, not less, technology; more, not less, human interaction with the natural ecology.  We are, after all, a legitimate part of that ecology.

The author also notes that Europeans have traditionally struck a proper balance between an individualism that allows creativity to flourish and avoids Oriental “ant-heap societies” while, at the same time, avoiding the atomization of hyper-individualism, which destroys societies, and which does not allow the full flowering of human expression possible through economies of scale and group cooperation.  However, under the current System, we have the worst of both aspects – a sort of atomized conformist collectivism, in which people are “free” to indulge in any (conformist, popular, mass culture) perversion or other destructive vice, but are not free to pursue objectives - particularly racial group objectives - outside of System-approved agendas, agendas all bound together by a mercantilist economic focus. Likewise, the author contrasts the concepts of Imperium and Empire – the former, of Roman derivation, fuses imperial rule with the maintenance of ethnic particularisms and is consistent with the maintenance of aristocratic values (as Forrest suggests, true Imperium was most evident in the Roman Republic as opposed to the Empire), and the latter, more characteristic of globalist and universalist imperial societies that tend to erase important divisions that separate humans along horizontal and vertical axes of distinctiveness.  The author also takes the opportunity to contrast the Roman style to the authoritarian technical dystopia of the USSR, which he equates to Egypt under the Pharaohs, and suggests a similarity between a mercantilist America and ancient Carthage.  All sounds about right.

The subject of art is touched upon, including a picture of this painting (which I’m sure all the “dark enlightenment” “game” crowd will just love) representative of negative current trends in “Western” art, and, perhaps, representative of negative current trends in “Western” female phenotypes. On a more positive note, the author presents Christopher Conte’s Chronos Version 2, which I have a high opinion of.  I suspect that this, like Bowden’s art, will be better appreciated by those with a Futurist temperament, as opposed to the more Traditionalist school, who would more likely admire Classical/Gothic/Renaissance art forms. Nevertheless, I advocate looking forward, not backwards, and Conte’s art represents that in its artistic essence.  I’m not suggesting that my opinion that the Chronos image represents a positive human future be taken literally in the sense that we should become skull-faced cyborgs.  By essence, I mean that the image represents a Futurist humanity, fully embracing Science and Technics, leaving behind childish invented gods, and becoming the godlike center of their own universal experience, for both “good” and “evil.”

A far as the author’s artistic discourse on “melodic” vs. “harmonic” music – that’s beyond my expertise or understanding.”  The author repeatedly asserts the grand importance of Richard Wagner in the scheme of Suprahumanism; I admit to not being very familiar with the full totality of Wagner’s work, so maybe I’m missing something here.  The author, echoing the thoughts of Giorgio Locchi, argues that Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibeling, together with Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, ushered in a new phase in European history, representing a “discontinuity” to the past historical tendency that led us through the Christian era. Building on Wagner/Nietzsche, the author contrasts irrationality with irrationalism.  Critics of Suprahumanism accuse it of irrationality, of rejecting rationality and reason. However, Suprahumanism does not reject the instrumental use of rationality and reason to achieve objectives (2); after all, the author embraces Science and Technics.  The point is that rationality and reason, by themselves, cannot offer the objectives to follow, and cannot serve as the foundation for goals.  For that, a degree of irrationalism, “myth”-making, is required. After all, what is rational?  Is Yockey’s Imperium idea purely rational? If rationality is king, maybe we should all embrace the System, become investment bankers, and reject racial nationalism (although there is the matter of genetic interest to consider). Thus, Nietzsche’s “existentialist” viewpoint does not derive historical outcomes deterministically from rationality and reason, but, rather, via irrationalism and myth, determined and actualized by human agency.  And the choices that lie before humanity, to be determined by human choice, are the Overman or the Last Man, between the soul of the Master morality and that of the Slave morality.  

The author then focuses on the meaning of Wagner’s Ring, the “music of the eternal recurrence” and here, I will admit, he sort of loses me; I understand the general meaning here, but it doesn’t have the same impact, for me, as does Nietzsche’s philosophy. That may be a specific issue for me – a person interested in books and ideas, not particularly interested in music, opera, etc. I’m sure others, with a more refined aesthetic taste, would find the author’s arguments in regard to Wagner more compelling.  The author then ties together Wagner and Nietzsche, attempting to explain Nietzsche’s apostasy toward Wagner, and, even more to the point, dissecting the ways that Wagner and Nietzsche’s worldviews are similar, and the ways – important but perhaps not decisive – that they differ. Wagner was in the end perhaps not ready for the final break with Christianity and the old ways, believing they were salvageable if de-Judaized and re-Germanized. In contrast, Nietzsche traced the rot back to Christianity itself and not merely to a more recent Judaization of Christianity; importantly, Nietzsche believed that the current European civilization, based as it is (ultimately) on a slave morality, was beyond salvage.  It must go down in ruins, we must help it go down in ruins, so that the new order can be built on the ruins of the old, the phoenix of the Overman rising from the ashes of the West.  This latter idea is consistent with the views discussed in my Overman High Culture essay; the old High Culture of the West may have run out its course.  In the Winter of the West, we need to look forward to the Spring of the Overman.

The author does not dwell too much on what some of us may consider the failed attempts to institute a Suprahumanist regime by the various fascist movements of the first half of the twentieth century.  Forrest asserts that fascism was a “precise and concluded historical phenomenon” that was a “premature and immature” attempt to actualize the Suprahumanist ethos.  The author suggests that “anti-fascism” has become a core of the egalitarian post-WII System, so much so that hysterical “anti-fascism” is one major source of legitimacy for the System, a form of “negative legitimacy” – fascism playing a role for the System as anti-matter does for matter. The System’s obsession with fascism and the ethos of Suprahumanism creates a situation in which Suprahumanism is continuously “reborn” as “potentiality” – it is a “ghost” haunting the System, which realizes that Suprahumanism is the only real alternative to the egalitarian multiracialist nightmare.

One criticism of this book that may have as much to do with my worldview as it does about the book itself, is that Suprahumanism is too much into “traditionalism” – although the author may not himself classify it in that manner - and makes too many assertions without a solid empirical foundation.  The metaphysical rambling in the “Chronospheres” section did not particularly impress me. The author did not, in my opinion, effectively explain the “three-dimensionality” of historical time and human perception, which is a key point of the book – or, to put it more accurately, he did not explain it in a manner readily digestible and understandable for those with a more directly empiricist mindset. And that is not an isolated instance; in other parts of the book, there are entire pages where I really don’t grasp what the author is trying to say, or, if the point is clear, it seems that paragraphs or pages are spent explaining ideas that could be more effectively summarized in several sentences. This is a familiar problem; when I tried to read some of Evola’s works, I just couldn’t get past one or two chapters.  Opinion masquerading as fact, wild subjectivity, a lack of grounding in any materialist and empirical foundation whatsoever – I’m convinced that the gnostic-spiritual-traditionalist crowd is neurologically hard-wired differently from empiricist, scientific types, and, perhaps, traditionalists and futurists also have incompatible mentalities.  While reading the book, I got the sense that Forrest was more of a “them” than an “us” with respect to these distinctive and disjunctive ways of looking at the world.  Therefore, the world of racial nationalist activism can be divided up into separate mental modules, including the “traditionalist- spiritual-existentialist-gnostic-golden age to kali yuga” module (patron saint, e.g., Julius Evola) and the “empiricist-materialist-scientific-(sometimes futurist)” model (patron saint, e.g., Frank Salter).  Communication between these two modules is difficult and fraught with misunderstandings.  Yockey was definitely in the “spiritual-Evola” camp, but since he was essentially a man of action, a political activist with a defined ultimate objective (Western Imperium) rather than a vague “return to tradition,” Yockey has been able to appeal to the materialist camp to the extent some in that camp ignore Yockey’s pathetic ramblings on science and similar topics.  As a member of the Salterian module, I am perhaps not the best judge of the value of this book, but nevertheless I did find value in it. It is possible that I have done a disservice to this book (and to Taha’s) based on this mental incompatibility; on the other hand, one can argue that the fundamental utility of a work can be judged by its broad applicability to all relevant situations, and so a top-level traditionalist work should be accessible to the materialists (and vice versa).

Another more specific problem is that as a (in my opinion) traditionalist type, the author doesn’t have an up-to-date grasp on science and population genetics.  While the overall thrust of the “History and Genes” section of the book is sound, and the statements about the overall genetic homogeneity of Europeans essentially accurate, NRY haplotypes really have nothing to do with it, and the idea that 90% of Europeans are, essentially, directly derived (unmixed) from Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers is inaccurate.  Just like I am not the best person to evaluate the work of, say, Evola, traditionalist types sometimes have the tendency to muck up the science, or, at least, be 10 years behind the times. The author’s invocation of the China-worshipping HBDer Richard Lynn is also not viewed favorably at this blog, there are others who can speak better in favor of eugenics. Also disappointing was no mention of Salter’s work, which is essential. The author does productively quote Will Durant, in that the three major biological lessons of history are: competition, selection, and the requirement for breeding (i.e., fertility) - today’s European world seems bereft of all three. And while the author dwells to an extreme degree on Nietzsche and, especially, Richard Wagner, Francis Parker Yockey is only mentioned in passing, a regrettable omission for a book with a focus on the future of European Man.  The author does however have some favorable words to say about Norman Lowell’s Imperium ideas.

I would now like to take this opportunity to promote some of my own ideas on down-to-earth strategy.  I very strongly argue that the future we want will never be actualized with the “movement” as it exists, and that something radically different is required.  I have outlined the fundamental principles of what I believe a new Movement should exhibit. This is of course mostly directly at elites.  Eventually, the masses need to be brought on board, to the extent that they are capable of understanding (or to the extent that they care).  Presently, the masses may need to go through stages of enlightenment: race realism, ethnonationalism, traditional Christianity.  But, even so, we need to absolutely insist that the race realism be based on genetic kinship, and not a Jew/Asian friendly HBD-Asperger obsession with IQ; the ethnonationalism needs to be defensive in nature and open to collaboration with other Euro-ethnonationalisms, and the “traditional” Christianity needs to be, at minimum, race-neutral, if not in fact actually race-aware. In the long run, however, the fundamentals listed in the link must be lived by the elites and preached to the masses.  The old days have been tried and have failed, repeatedly, for decades. It’s time for a change. Suprahumanism will not be possible otherwise.  After all, let us not forget Revilo Oliver, a member of the Old Movement, recognized its record of unremitting failure, speaking about 50 years of failure in a speech given nearly 50 years ago!

Getting close to the end of this review, I would like to cite a Jose Ortega y Gasset quote reproduced in this book:

Europeans do not know how to live unless they are engaged in some great enterprise. When this is lacking, they grow petty and feeble and their souls disintegrate.

Indeed.  Look around you.

In summary, yes, one can find some faults in this work, just as one can in the writings of Salter and Yockey.  It’s more important, however, to look at the big picture, to have a “large canvas” view of the issue. In this light, this book is vitally important, and is one of the first significant steps along the path to the Overman High Culture.  We need more works such as this, and less obsessive nitpicking over gene frequencies, cephalic indices, and dueling interpretations of racial history.  This work walks along the path to the Overman from the aesthetic-artistic-philosophical perspective; in addition to more such works, we also need the Overman pathway to be illuminated by works focused on the scientific-empiricist-political perspective as well.

We have to move forward, if we attempt to “stop and rest” or, worse, move backward, we’re finished.  It’s time to grow up as a people (and a “movement”) and face the future.  Better yet: make the future.

It is at this point appropriate to end this review by quoting Forrest’s end of his book:

Nietzsche prophesied that the Earth will eventually belong to either the last man or the superman. There will be no other alternatives. 

Magna Europa est Patria Nostra. 

Footnotes:

1. Of course, Shaw was a nitwit about certain thing; e.g., see this.

2. For another take on issue, see the sixth paragraph here.