Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Preface
Introduction
The Average Day
On the Question of Freedom
The Deceptive Denied Desire
A Choice of Dependence
Independence
Internal/External
You’ve Been Schooled
Credentialism
Success and Failure
Careers
Normality
Poverty
Entertaining Screens
Replicated Reality
Identity
Politics
Money
Poverty is Your Choice
Practical
Assumptions
Internal Life
Finding Freedom
Undoing Self-Policing
Entertainment
Social Media
Smartphones
Poverty
To Consume, To Hold, To Give
Who is Your King?
The Figure of the Anarch
This World
Bibliography
Preface
The modern mindset and its consequences have been a disaster for
man’s freedom. He unknowingly finds himself ceaselessly in a state
of servitude to thousands of micro-masters, each coercing,
compelling, and pressuring him into doing, buying, and acting in
ways that are likely contrary to his genuine desires. I am ignorant as
to what each individual person’s preferred desires are due to the fact
they belong to another’s internal life. Such preferences don’t interest
me as I don’t seek to push any individual person in any singular
direction. In fact, I don’t seek to tell people what to do at all. The
abstraction that is ‘the modern world’ on the other hand, does seek
to control, it does seek to tell one what to do, and it does so via that
individual’s own reason, using them like a flesh-puppet. Covertly
stripping out values of culture, family, tradition, heritage, and religion,
and parasitically infecting them with modern rhetoric - the modern
mindset - that declares itself true by virtue of its own logical form
alone.
My reasoning that the modern world is coercive is formed from
the commonly held perspective that the modern world is shallow,
vacuous, and nihilistic. That despite everything it affords us, it has
failed to give us any semblance of meaning, contentment, or
happiness. That, in spite of all the proclaimed luxuries, pleasures,
holidays, getaways, treatments, therapies, innovations,
progressions, advancements, sensual pleasures, and emancipations
that the glorified modern world has afforded as granted, almost all
casual and experiential investigation concerning the day-to-day life
of modern people reveals that they are unhappy, anxious,
depressed, demotivated, stressed, unfulfilled, angry, or just plain
bored. In short, the contradiction this book seeks to tackle and
uproot is this one - The modern world is collectively understood as
an exemplary form of civilizational existence, and yet everyone is
miserable.
Before going on I must make my position clear - I don’t
primarily consider ‘modernity’ to have a connection with objects,
material, and possessions. Modernity is an internal mindset, it is a
materialistic parasite that seeps into the brain and quickly erodes
basic understandings pertaining to liberty, freedom, individuality,
principle, faith, belief, order, etiquette, and various other so-called
(by modernity’s standards) outdated relics. To repeat, modernity isn’t
material, it’s a mindset. Many of the objects which happen to exist
within modernity have also existed within times that weren’t modern,
and so it is only in our understanding of them that they become
modern. I believe this to such an intense degree that I would even
argue a computer can be used in a non-modern way, a smartphone
can become alien to its habitat, and so-called ‘modern technology is
simply technology that happens to exist within the era we define as
modern.
One of the currents running throughout this book is the
distinction between the internal state of man and the external state of
the world. As far as I am concerned, the former controls the latter;
the internal is our lens out into the external, it filters it in relation to
our principles and ideals, and not the other way around. In some
sense, the collective agreement that such a thing as the ‘modern
world’ exists, has in turn developed a sort of autonomous psychic
entity which we all refer back to when making our choices. That is to
say, we all unconsciously make ‘modern’ choices, but have no
anchored reference to what modernity actually is - its existence is
thus materially elusive, and psychically invasive. The aims of this
book are to learn how to unplug ourselves from this entity we call
‘modernity’, to learn how to stop being modern so we can perceive
this state of being from a third position, and finally, to use this
knowledge to develop a form of internal sovereignty unique to
ourselves.
But what would such sovereignty actually look like? It would
look like the girl on the cover of this book, from a painting entitled On
Holiday (Girl resting on the grass) by Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov.
Here we see someone we all desire to be, someone who is clearly
free, and someone who has found freedom. Not in her precise non-
action - as lying around on the grass isn’t for everyone - but within
her internal state. It is clear to us that this is someone who is at
peace with reality, and has found a way to live, despite having to be
in the world, which affords them this contentment. In the world, but
not of it.
We see someone who is internally free, who - in reference to
the painting - has symbolically detached themselves from the world,
and yet still has a sensible relationship with it. She knows she has to
be in the modern world, but on a deeper level, she understands she
doesn’t have to be of it. Despite her appearance - lounged, relaxed,
and contemplative - to attain this state of being actually requires a lot
of work, and the further along in life one is, the more work will be
required.
A child has almost no modern rot to clean out, they could enter
into this state almost instantaneously - in fact, and one might even
say it is their state. Teenagers might utilize their rebellious impulses
to push themselves towards such contentment, but the pressures of
their age could equally push them in the opposite direction more
forcefully. Finally, an adult will need to work hard to uproot all the
presumptive filth which has seeped into every pore of their being,
and many won't bother, simply doubling down on their ‘lot in life’,
shouting “C’est la vie!” as they drag their bloated, seed-oil filled
dadbod on yet another dream cruise, scratching their existential itch
just long enough for them to avoid having a genuine psychic
breakdown.
So this is our individual task, to become like this girl resting on
the grass, not externally, but internally. For some this might entail
starting a homestead or business, for others it might mean dropping
out and going nomadic, a few might wish to return to school, and
many may simply find a few ideas which will help them ease the
incessant numbing of the modern world. That’s the abstract task
then, but what’s my purpose here? Why do you need this book at
all?
The Average Day
The purpose of this book, beneath its frills, dramatics, and scorn, is
ultimately related to the freedom of the individual within the modern
world. So I won't begin with some absurdist philosophical gesture, or
metaphysical expansion of what freedom is - I will begin from the
average Western day (many of you have seen me do this before, but
I find it such a fun and enlightening exercise), and then turn towards
the basic presumptions, systems, and self-imposed constraints
which have allowed such an existence to become an acceptable way
to live. Firstly - and very briefly - I’ll outline the basic modern day,
then I will take a lot of time to outline how it is we came to assume
this way of living is normal, and finally, I will take a little time to show
you how you can begin to deprogram yourselves regarding the basic
presumptions of the modern world.
~
You may or may not be someone who wakes up every day
begrudgingly, neither ‘here nor there’, as they say, regarding the day
ahead of you. As far as you’re concerned, each day appears to be -
despite various institutions attempting to prove to you otherwise - a
dour repetition, the week itself melting into a homogeneous,
indiscernible lump. In this manner, in this social and cultural
understanding of the idea of 'having to get up in the morning', as an
implicitly neutral or even negative thing, lies the mystery we’re
seeking to unravel in this book. In fact, inherent within this negative
perspective regarding the simple act of waking up, and following this,
the gargantuan task of getting up, is found the slowly crystallized
foundation of arrogance, cynicism, and ingratitude which bolsters
acceptance of the misery itself; default secularism which derides its
only pleasure from being cynical and sarcastic about even the most
minor things. And so it is that the average day of modern man begins
in just this way. His literal first seconds of routine existence are
themselves proof of his servitude to a false idol. Modern man begins
his day by internally stating that it sucks to even begin the day. The
question, put simply then, is why do we seemingly have (or at least
have the potential to have) everything we need to make us happy
and content, and yet, we are collectively far away from this state of
being?
Why aren’t we happy despite everything ‘being in its right
place’?
Why, after acquiring a house, a car, a dishwasher, a big TV,
and all the other required apparatuses and techno-umbilical cords
needed to be a good, normal person, are we still not content?
Why, despite - often hidden - alternative options to the life we
live do we continue to do that which knowingly makes us miserable?
First, let’s continue our look at the average day of a western
consumer, primarily so we can pick apart many of these actions and
their presumptions later on.
Promised some palpable Eden we - as we have seen -
begrudgingly arise, awaking to a life which has resulted in one part
grunt make-work, one part chores, one part hedonist nonsense, and
one part lousy sleep. We can consider this the quartet of consumer
bliss within the modern world. Arising to the searing bleep of multiple
alarms, all needing to be set at various minute intervals for the fact
that you no longer awake quickly or easily at all. Getting up has itself
become the instinctual push against that thing you know you truly
don’t want to give your energy over to, but have as of yet been
unable to define. The limbs and the body move of their own accord
at this point in the day, you have a vague sense of some semi
consciousness within the top part of your body usually called the
head, with the lower parts moving you of their own accord towards
that cheap burnt good that people call coffee. And at this moment,
the day has begun, as they say. The day begins then for most
people in the sense that they're not truly awake, they're intuitively
pushing back against something, and they immediately need an
artificial means to stimulate themselves into giving themselves over
to this elusive thing. Not a positive submission of fatigue or
openness to something higher, but a submission that always
adheres to friction.
At this juncture, you gather up your work stuff in a rush that
never seems to end, nor manages to find a pace, rhythm, or routine.
Everything is clunky, as it should be. Bundling everything into little
bags and little pots, food going stale, nothing as good as it could
have been if you'd just ‘found the time’. Eyelids drooping, brain fog
slowly lifting as artificial stimulus courses through your hot and cold
body, and just as you have a brief glimpse of fresh air in the cool
breeze, you find yourself once again slamming a car door and
trapping yourself within your vehicle. For now, it is time for
commuting. This car of course was primarily bought for the fact that
you need to get to work in the first place, 30, 60, 90 minutes of
commute time, you don't question this and why would you ever
question this because, of course, well, as they say, everybody needs
to work for a living, and therefore, everyone needs to get to work.
Eventually you arrive at that place that you call work. False
greetings to people you never really would have wanted to spend
time with, these false greetings are then falsely returned; nothing
sincere has ever seemed to develop between you and these people,
and you know this for the mere fact that if the job was simply to
cease and stop, you would message or contact none of these people
again; this is not out of selfishness nor cruelty nor rudeness, you are
perfectly amicable, however, it is just as if the world is an expansion
of the high school playground, and everybody is just where they
have been put, so you simply get on as best you can.
As for the job itself and the work that it entails, it could - as
everybody covertly admits - be completed within 1/8 of the time.
Most people in the same office as you, as in all the offices that
surround you and all of your friend's offices too, understand that no
one truly knows what the hell anybody else is doing. It appears that
very few jobs actually have a clear purpose anymore. Most of the
people you know and most of the people you've met seem to
metaphorically be moving apples and bananas around, whilst every
now and again you may happen to meet someone who still does the
actual growing. All of this is to say that the majority of modern work
is truly the equivalent of eyewash - “Work was like a stick. It had two
ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality;
when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.”
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). It appears to most people that if they were
to cease existing, and thus stop working, very little - if anything at all
- would change, and so most of their day is spent looking like they’re
working, so as to keep their job, and thus be able to afford their
preferred standard of living.
However, despite the utter vacuity of modern office work, most
people would, as they say, ‘kill for such a job’. The general ambition
of modern man, then, is to acquire a job that amounts to no more
than drifting between various bits and pieces of data, wherein what
one calls break time and lunchtime are no longer really needed
because the work itself is so un-strenuous. Most modern work
amounts to a human being existing within a room for the sake of
appearances.
These days float by in a haze of bureaucratic filler, and as such
you find interesting ways to make it appear as if you are working,
such as re-formatting spreadsheets, organizing your emails, or
simply sitting with a ‘professional’ document open on your PC
monitor whilst you scroll on your phone out of sight. It quickly
becomes clear to you that those who get pushed up the ladder and
advance within these careers are simply those who make it appear
as if they are busier, those who are more loyal to the illusion and
theater of modern busyness.
Just as quickly as you realize this, you equally realize that the
entire edifice of modern ‘work-life’ is built atop this pretense of
busyness, and thus to point it out would be to act as the child in The
Emperor’s New Clothes, likely resulting in a form of unspoken
blacklisting where any possibility of career advancement has thus
been terminated. Because to mention the fact that no one is really
doing anything and most of the work is nonsense, isn’t just to
question the practicality of time and resources within your place of
work, but quite literally to admit to the modern equivalent of the
death of God, uprooting the entire material structure we currently rely
on for meaning. In fact, the theatrics of modern life are so strong,
that if one were to mention the grand illusion we all partake in daily
to a colleague or friend, it would likely land on them as if part of
another language, something they literally cannot compute.
Anyway, let's continue with your day as it is within the world.
Once again you get in your car at the end of the workday, you
commute home not really noticing the time, and at this juncture the
day is basically played in reverse. You get home, you do a few
chores, you say to yourself that it's too late to start one of the many
personal projects you keep putting off, and so you autoplay a vague
TV program, the plot of which is so vacuous that one can still scroll
on their phone and follow along. Dinner appears, and you could have
put more effort into it but you didn’t (again), your eyelids begin to
droop, and you find yourself in bed staring at the dimly lit screen of
your smartphone once more. You think about the holiday that’s
coming up, you think about the weekend, you think about drinks with
the lads, anything but having to stare point-blank into the face of a
life which is getting away from you. A life of seeming liminality,
starting at no place and ending at no place. At no point in the day
does one feel quite there.
There's more I could write on this, and plenty of people have
written on this absurd way of existing within the modern world, but it
gets boring fast, simply going over the minutiae of how dull, idiotic,
and trapped we are. There are hundreds of cynical novels which
have won awards for their distinct ability to ‘reveal’ the emptiness of
modern life, there are countless philosophical and critical texts
detailing what’s known as the ‘crisis of modernity’, and there are a
multitude of texts outlining how to perform very clear types of
external exit. But what about you and your life? Where can you
begin? What actually is the problem here? It’s hard to see, but the
reason we’re all so miserable is because we desire freedom, and we
haven’t a clue how to get it.
Most people seem to not realize it, but their primary focus in life
- one which I see as underneath all others - is the ‘quest’ for
freedom. Before tackling freedom in general, as a concept, one
might state ‘How can you know that everyone’s personal primary
focus is freedom?’ Freedom is the right to act and think as one wants
to, with respect to their individual preferences. So it doesn’t matter if
you want to become a rural homesteader, an urban lawyer, or a
grubby vagabond, as each of these decisions is solely of an
individual, then each person, in ‘going after’ what it is they want in
life, is making freedom their goal and journey.
Whether that journey is becoming free, finding out what
freedom actually is, or, most importantly, understanding how you are
in fact not free, beneath all actions is some form of relationship with
freedom. Even between drastically differing worldviews, the quest is
still for freedom, but simply undertaken from different individual
axioms. For instance, as an example, if one believes in God then
freedom is understood from the given parameter from which a
relationship with the Lord is developed. If one is an atheist, then
freedom is the default parameter from which meaning is developed.
As humans, and as individuals, we act. It has become the norm
within the modern world to become reluctant to address the fact we
do X instead of Y, or we have a preference for apples over pears.
Due to increasing forms of intense propaganda, freedom is no longer
understood as something which comes prior to our actions, thus
positing the idea that things could be different. Instead, we live in
such a psychological state whereby we assume to exist in the
timeline with the most freedom, and thus don’t question our
assumptions or actions. I do X because I’m free, and I’m free
because I can do X. The justification, legitimacy, and thus
unquestioning nature of our own freedoms have become
tautological; our approach to the question of freedom has, on a very
basic level, itself become unfree. Has this been caused accidently or
by some agenda? Who knows? Do I care? No. Should you? No.
What one should care about, once they realize they are in fact ‘in
prison’, is how to get out of prison. Of course, the majority of effort in
relation to escaping prisons of the psyche is first realizing you’re
within one in the first place. So let me put some time aside here,
deconstruct that beautiful ‘Day-In-The-Life’, and prove to you that
you exist within a self-constructed prison.
On the Question of Freedom
One may notice from these cycles and presumptions brought about
by modern schooling, that much of their impetus is equally reliant on
a further elusive idea, or dualistic pair of ideas, that of success and
failure.
In abiding by the school system itself in accordance with its
programmed assumption that it is the sole path to success, the
young student not only conflates the process of schooling with the
content of schooling (grades over knowledge), but simultaneously
overlook their own personal desires, initiatives, and aims in favor of
the process of success itself. Once again, this all sounds quite
complicated, so I’ll give you the long-and-short of it here: Schooling
teaches you to form your life around the system’s understanding of
success, without once allowing you to think critically about what
success might mean for you.
The sensible reasoning behind human actions - actions of
individuals - is that they undertake them in the belief they will
increase their quality of life. We do things because we believe they
will make our lives more comfortable, more prosperous, healthier,
etc. These actions are entirely subjective, what one person
considers an increase in their quality of life, another person may very
well not do. Or: different people like different things, shock horror.
Following this, to ‘succeed’ in life is, in reality, an extremely
subjective thing. The notion of success, as defined as - the
accomplishment of an aim or purpose - quite literally has no explicit
values tied to it. A businessman who becomes a billionaire is
successful, and so is a chef who gets 3 Michelin Stars, as is a
devout Christian who enters a Monastery; success is subjective, to
succeed is dependent on individual parameters.
As we’ve seen, however, schooling doesn’t care about
individuals. In fact, not only does it not care about them, it quietly
and maliciously discards the notion of the individual altogether in
favor of age groups, sets, ability levels, vague interests, and
collective strengths; some students will become X and others Y,
none of this has anything to do with their individual interests or
values, but is understood from the logic of the process itself. So we
can now extend our modern educational loop, this time focusing on
its implicit promise that one will succeed.
Need a Grade > Go to School > Obedience > Get a Grade >
Success
Schooling promises you that by following its logic (by rote) you
will succeed, and yet, it seeks to enact this promise without ever
asking you, or anyone else for that matter, what exactly it would
mean for you to ‘succeed’ in life? Of course, to ask each student
about their personal values would be time-consuming, risk disrupting
the herd mentality, and also treat them as adults. So, instead,
schooling puts in place of genuine, authentic individual values a
variety of modern ideals they assume each person would of course
desire: money, fame, professional success, property, power, status,
and acceptance. Whether or not these ideals are such that one
actually desires them is not down to me to say, it is down to the
individual. However, due to the tautological (true by virtue of its
logical form alone) nature of the education system, these values
equally become to be - collectively - understood as those values
which one should be striving for. In determining the process,
schooling haphazardly determines the ends.
One can, from the moment of complete initiation into the school
system (around age 7), only succeed on the school’s terms. Any
other form of ‘success’ would not be seen as such, and usually is
viewed as either a hindrance or something altogether weird. I mean,
who wants to tend to woodland, give themselves to God, live
ascetically, live quietly, be charitable, create beauty, build a
community, be a housewife, create a smallholding etc. when they
could just be making money. So we now have a twofold problem
regarding the schooled entering the world. Firstly, their
understanding of success and failure has been artificially implanted
within them, and secondly, they’ve never been given the opportunity
to actually sit down and quietly discern what it is they actually believe
in.
This might not seem all that bad, it may appear that from this
moment on it’s just a case of figuring out what it is one wants to do
with their life, and adjusting accordingly. For some this may be the
case. We often hear of various people ‘dropping-out’, exiting,
escaping-the-rat-race etc. People who in some moment of shock
stare point-blank into their mind numbing reality and bolt for the door.
But what about the rest? Is it the case that I’m saying absolutely
everyone who’s living a modern existence is in the wrong? No, this
isn’t what I’m saying. Personally, I believe that the majority of people
desire to live a basic, quiet life - a family and a few immediate
friends, a stable job, a few hobbies, and possibly some higher
meaning. Beyond this, I’m not sure most people would ever enter
into various political and social discussions regarding various values.
This might not be true of course, you’ll have to ask the people you
meet and figure it out for yourself.
The problem being that once such an artificial value-system is
implanted (by school) one is both taking a trajectory towards
something they may not actually want, and consistently blocking out
time to think about what it is they do want. In short, schooling
teaches people to chase desires which aren’t theirs. Seems
harmless enough, but when you hit middle-age - or even retirement -
and are still at an absolute loss as to why no itch has ever been
scratched, and you’re still just as discontented and miserable as
when you started, you’ll have no recourse to find out why you feel
this way.
The majority of people have what one might consider entirely
natural desires - to have children, to have family, to find shelter (own
a home), to eat, to drink, to be social etc. Desires which are of true
value to us as human beings and usually completely quash the prior
feeling of being dissatisfied. Then there are artificial desires - to own
a yacht, to collect books, to learn to make great espresso, to restore
an old motorcycle etc. It isn’t up to me to say whether these desires
are bad or good, it is however clear that they don’t construct the very
fabric of human existence. E.g. Humans need to eat, drink, have
children and socialize; we don’t need a yacht, a motorcycle, etc. In
relation to this division, between natural and artificial desires, it’s
clear that the former desires are simply within us, prior to anything.
Whether one wishes to put this down to God or to evolution, the
point still stands, certain wants are hardwired into us. The others…
not so much.
One may have already noticed that the process of schooling
has little - if anything at all - to do with natural desires. It teaches one
nothing about raising children, growing a stable family, purchasing
and maintaining a home, personal health with respect to food and
drink, and the gesture it makes towards socialization is entirely
understood with respect to obedience. It does, on the other hand,
instill various artificial desires into one’s mind under the guise of
success, with such an understanding eventually taking on such an
intensity that those who are schooled equate success with being in a
‘high paying career’, and failure with various material lacks alike the
ones we saw at the beginning of this book.
And so one leaves school, intent on making a ‘success’ of
themselves, blasting through course after course, promotion after
promotion, job after job, until they reach a point where they exist
under some such signifier as CEO, executive, officer, Head of X,
professional, managerial, chief, principal, director, or maybe even
president. Along the way, the other ‘factors’ of their life often end up
coming in second place, relegated to an afterthought once the real
work towards success has been done. They miss various
experiences with their children due to working late, dinners are often
rushed or eaten over paperwork, their time off is a slave to their
incessantly success-driven mind, their marriage or relationship fights
to find applicable ‘date nights’, and each-and-every experiential,
quality-centered part of life is slotted into the quantitative life of the
modern professional.
As the years go by, everything starts to make less and less
sense, falling apart at the seams as one's actions begin to take on a
transparent absurdity. One begins to notice that no amount of
promotions, raises, company cars, or additional status signifiers is
making a modicum of difference to their actual wellbeing or quality of
life, but left with the only value-system they know and understand -
the one afforded them by schooling - they simply power on through,
assuming that bigger, faster, higher, stronger, and richer will be the
answer to their concerns. Eventually this type of activity literally
takes on something akin to a performance. Nearing so-called
retirement age, these wealthy washed-up automatons have doubled-
down on their life of excess. Meaning is now solely derived from
quantity and intensity, they take to extremes in an attempt to milk the
teat of the modern world for all its worth - all-inclusive cruises,
extreme sports, binge-drinking, prescribed opiate addictions, weight
loss, weight gain, fast cars, slow boats, and an ever-insatiable lust
for anything…anything which appears to be able to restore their lost
youth and lost individuality. But alas! It’s gone, unknowingly handed
over to the highest bidder for the price of a two-up-two-down
suburban dream home. And this is why I consider schooling to be of
such paramount importance. Because via its hegemonic, tautological
position in relation to modern notions of success and happiness, it
parasitically infects man with an alien value system, which by its very
definition as alien to the individual in question can never afford him
any sense of fulfillment. But, in addition to this, this same artificial
value-system simultaneously erodes any desire for any other value-
system, considering any alternative to its own hegemony to be
suspect, dissident, or simply a glitch.
It is my belief, then, that everyone may very well be miserable,
frustrated and discontented because they’re doing what they don’t
want to do. And yet, at the same time, have no recourse as to find
out what it is they actually do want to do. Implanted with values not
of their own at a young age, modern man continues on without aim,
without even the possibility of developing an aim; a consumptive
automaton, ceaselessly pleasing those who don’t even know he
exists. And why is it he carries on in such a way? For fear of failure,
of course. Success itself - as seen in these circumstances - is never
positive. In such a state, if one desires to ‘be successful’, such a
desire is always understood with regard to the negative, which is to
say - To wish to be successful, is truly to wish to not be seen as a
failure. Without an actual aim or purpose to drive us (such as
children, a wife, or something Higher), our compulsion to move
forward can only be due to an implicit fear regarding our status in
life; the successful are not failures, and there’s nothing worse - in the
modern world - than being seen as a failure (read: unsocialized,
weird, odd, not-normal etc.)
We can, knowing what we now know, view failure from two
points of view, the latter of which negates the very possibility of
failure in the sense we commonly understand it. Firstly, there are
those who have failed from the perspective of the system. In setting
itself up as the sole ticket for success (via grades etc.), the school
system equally sets itself up as the only way to avoid failure - hence
why people hold onto it (and their grades) for dear life. To fail, by the
standards of schooling, is to not have acquired a sufficient amount or
standard of grades as to be able to apply for either further education
or a commonly sought-after job. To fail, then, as generally
understood, is to be so disobedient with respect to schooling that
one is unable to enter the ‘normal’, adult world. Existence within
such a position leaves the said people feeling like children eternally,
unable to make the societally accepted leap to normal life.
As we’ve seen however, school grading isn’t equal to actual
knowledge or interests, and the logic of schooling itself is bolstered
for the sole reason of further proving the existence of school itself.
So to ‘fail’, as per the standards of a schooled society, is truly only to
fail with respect to the desires of others and the system itself. You
most certainly haven’t failed yourself; because it’s likely you never
even got a chance to define what success means for you. This is the
second perspective, failure as viewed from the point-of-view of a
critical individual. Seen from this position, failure can only be
understood in relation to one’s individual goals and aims. In this
manner failure doesn’t attain the status of a collectively agreed upon
god, but simply a state regarding one’s personal efforts.
The normal understanding of failure is doubly tyrannical in
much the same way common success is. To be successful within the
modern world, as I’ve shown, is usually to acquire a job or lifestyle
you never wanted or questioned in the first place, and therefore all
success is impotent, making one feel even more lost. The same
applies for failure, and yet due to its inherent negative connotations it
feels even more intense. What do I mean by this? If the success is
false, then so is the failure. However, the problem is that if one fails
then it appears such a feeling of misery, depression, anxiety or
despair is just because one never actually succeeded. What people
who are in such a state need to realize - as soon as possible! - is
that if the common understanding of success in the modern world is
not one they agree with, then equally, the notion of failure too is
nonsensical. Once more, how can you fail in lieu of a success you
don’t even consider to be a good thing? If you care not for riches,
then to be poor is not to fail. If you prefer solitude, then one is not a
failure for lack of friends. If you disagree that status is a sign of
success, then the humble are far from failures. Again, decide for
yourselves, I’m not here to decide what’s good for you.
Years, decades, and sometimes entire lifetimes after the
schooled understanding of success and failure has taken root, one
still finds adults bursting with despair and humiliation at their self-
assumed position as a failure. We often hear of people berating
themselves for ‘Never making anything of their life.’, or for ‘Being a
total failure.’ and yet, usually these self-condemnations are
understood with respect to schooled artificial desires, and thus such
people haven’t actually failed, they’ve simply been duped. This
notion often hits extremely close to home for many people, whose
entire lives have been a precarious act of trying to walk along the
modern tightrope of success, all the time either side of them is found
the possibility for failure. Such a walk itself is riddled with anxiety,
stress, fear, hostility, rivalry, hatred, tension, and malice, all for the
sake of achieving something which never would have given even a
second’s feeling of contentment. A life spent in a state of strained
exhaustion, only to arrive at the end spent, with nothing to show for
it, either internally, or externally.
We don’t have to live this way. We don’t have to agree because
we assume agreement is the only way to success. We don’t have to
accept predefined definitions of success and with them the
assumption of failure. We don’t need to feel we need to be
successful at all, we can, if we like, disregard this idea altogether.
Careers
Let us, however, for the sake of order at least, follow the conclusions
of the logic of schooling to their own conclusion, the fated job, or, in
schooling speak, a career. A job is ‘what people do’. When two
strangers meet or are introduced to each other, the first question
between them is usually ‘So, what is it you do?’ Collectively we’ve
come to understand what it is ‘we do’ with our employment. We
seem to have forgotten that as humans we actually do many other
things with our time and not just work - hobbies, family, travel,
creation, worship, and conversation, to name but a few. Now, many -
lackeys and defenders of the system - will berate me for stating such
a thing, arguing that if one was to answer the question ‘What do you
do?’ with anything other than their job, this would be a pretentious
act. I might be inclined to agree if it weren’t for the fact that after both
parties in question answer with their respective jobs unless one has
a connection to the other’s employment, the conversation usually
stops there -
‘So, what do you do?’
‘I drive buses, you?’
‘Retail manager, you been driving long?’
‘Fair few years. Enjoy retail?’
‘It is what it is.’
Repeat this ad infinitum and you have the life of the average
modern party for the first 3-4 hours, before enough alcoholic
stimulation has seeped into bloodstreams to get things going; even
an aneurysm would be respite from such living-death! The reason
such conversations are so impotent is because they make
transparent the failure of schooling’s value system to live up to its
elusive promises. Such people did everything they were told,
followed by rote their teachers, got the grades, and here they are,
with nothing to show for it, in a job that would replace them in a
heartbeat, without changing anything at all. Which is to say,
answering the question ‘What is it you do?’ with your productive
employment does make complete sense, as our employment is how
we add value to the world. However, this notion falls flat if the people
in question don’t consider their work (what they ‘do’) to actually be of
any value and this is the case with the majority of modern people.
Since the publication of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs in 2018,
and with the additional workforce destabilization caused by the
Covid-19 event between 2020 and 2022, it has become transparent
that the majority of the modern workforce is merely making it appear
as if they’re working. What work they actually do could be
accomplished in a quarter of the time, and the majority of jobs could
be done from home. However, despite a global reenactment of the
Emperor’s New Clothes - with individuals like the young boy, and the
modern world’s ethic as the Emperor himself - we seem to have
ignored our own experiences, and regressed to the pretense that all
is fine, all are fulfilled, and we just need a few more years to iron out
the creases.
The cat, despite much panic, is out of the bag. It’s become
widely acknowledged, though usually beneath a heavy helping of
irony and sarcasm, that such careers have not lived up to our
expectations. Perhaps a non-desired job which genuinely requires
you to work can stave off one’s search for themselves for a lifetime,
but a job which is at heart ultimately a lie, allows a little too much
free time for its employees to think about what it exactly is they’re
even doing. With only 50% of the workforce stating they believe their
job has any meaningful impact on the world, half of the population
has been left to the merciless whims of the logic afforded to them by
schooling, and thereby fall into the idea that they’ve somehow failed.
It is not the job itself which is meaningless, but is seemingly - after
the logic of schooling has taken root - one’s inability to adhere
correctly to the system which gives one their promised pleasures.
The logic of schooling teaches us that it is perfect, and as such, if
one follows its rails and comes out the other side critical, alienated,
and confused, then that’s an error on their part, and not of the
system itself.
I am putting forth the argument that the reason many people
stay in jobs they - often openly - dislike, if not actively despise, is
(aside from the need for money) because they have no capacity to
develop an alternative structure of meaning. Stripped of sincere
familial, cultural, religious, and communal values, the modern worker
has little else to satiate their oh-so-human need for meaning than
their job, to admit that the system has betrayed them would not only
be to act in the dissident way they were barred from doing during
their schooling, but would be quite literally to witness the death of
their final god. At least with one’s miserable job they at least have
the purpose of being miserable somewhere, without which they
would be a human without an anchor, bereft of all meaning, and
most importantly bereft of all possibility of meaning creation. In this
way, the essence of the modern world is ‘to work’. If, therefore, one
doesn’t work, then one is simply…existing. Some weird blob of flesh
on the periphery of modern life, unable to do anything.
In the ‘completion’, then, of the schooling script, whereby one
has finally achieved their final, top grade, and thus has acquired their
desired job, one quickly finds themselves at a loss if they don’t
continue to adhere to the script. Without the ceaseless striving for
some far off promotion, upgrade, or modern innovation, modern man
is lost. The entire structure of his existential satiation is based either
upon subservience to authority, a promotion, an acquisition, or some
form of training with sight for advancement. Therefore, if modern
man isn’t gaining ‘modern’ ground, he is stagnant. In this place of
stasis he comes to notice that little else in life affords him meaning
outside of this form of acquisition, and so he quickly retreats to its
comfort. This, I posit, is the reason so many people refuse to retire,
undergo official schooling mere years from their death, or act out
absurd fantasies during their retirement amidst confrontation with
meaninglessness.
Normality
One may now ask why such a mode of existence continues to be,
why is it modern man never undergoes a moment of introspection
regarding his actions? The reason for this is due to something which
has already been mentioned countless times - man’s internal life is
not his own, it is modern. And so in any moment of introspection all
he’s truly looking at is the modern beast itself, thus justifying any and
all of his actions. In short, man’s very identity is of the modern world.
Identity (especially in relation to politics) has been the social
buzzword of modernity for the last 20 years or so, and yet, in spite of
this, very few people within the modern world have an ‘identity’ of
any quality. Beyond vices, political allegiance, and consumption
habits, the identity of most people is a withered husk, kept alive by
the latest innovation in mainstream-mediated virtue. I don’t consider
this to be a political issue, but a social one, especially as the issue
itself covers the entire political spectrum. Those on the left define
themselves by signaling their support for the latest minority group to
scream loudest, those on the right by allegiance to more and more
obscure reactionaries, and those in the middle eek out an identity by
proclaiming no allegiance at all and get lost in the noise of identity.
The modern identity is like a hastily sweated-out dating profile,
people like certain things, dislike certain things, go certain places,
and eat certain meals, but as for values, principles, heritage, and
culture, forget it. The modern obsession with identity is,
unsurprisingly, an inherently modern obsession, and so the only way
to leave it behind is to exit modernity altogether. Unfortunately for
modern man, locked in the bind of logic beyond its bounds, the only
way he knows how to define himself isn’t by who he is, but solely by
what he does and what he consumes. What it means to ‘be
someone’ in the modern world has nothing to do with experience - in
the sense of wisdom or values - and everything to do with status,
itself legitimized by the logic of modernity itself. Who we are is who
we desire to be within the modern world, a world we never even
agreed to, and thus, a self we never agreed to.
Such a ‘self’ or identity begins its construction the moment we
set foot in the school system. Slowly, at first, but ever so surely
everyone around us begins to take on a predefined role and identity
regarding their position in life. The teacher, in taking pride in the
formality of Mr or Mrs Smith, strips themselves of all personal traits,
and becomes - for their students - little more than a means to a job.
The students, in obedience, begin to constrain themselves via their
grades to certain futures. And continually, as we progress through
our lives, we are surrounded by various ‘members’ of society who
are solely defined by their job.
As this form of artificial identity development continues we find
ourselves growing in an extremely lopsided way. Here we can look
back at the notion of segregation within the school system, and
understand that the inherent presumptions within these divisions
likewise internalized our distinctly modern capabilities as our identity
itself. In growing within an environment bereft of familial, cultural,
national, and/or religious values, the modern self has only production
and consumption as its benchmarks for understanding itself.
Thereby instilling the assumption that to quantitatively work and
consume more, is thus to have a qualitatively greater identity. Thus
resulting in modern man’s ego being little more than a drawn out list
of consumption habits and vices. Of course, even modernity has its
limits, and herein we find a clear one. As - in being stripped of all
heritage - modern man’s identity has become nothing more than a
shopping list of the latest fads, as such there needed to arise a
surrogate form of identity-substance. Enter politics.
Politics
In the earlier section on normality, you will note that I used the
Overton Window (the range of politically acceptable opinion) as my
example for how reality is consistently constrained in the name of the
norm. If this theory holds water (and you’re free to disagree) then it
posits that any political allegiance within and of the modern world in
its entirety is nothing more than a consumptive, dualistic signal.
What I mean by this is that modern political affiliation is nothing more
than a collective, modern, masturbatory tribal fantasy. There are
teams of blues, reds, greens, yellows, and every other color
available. If you feel like your preferred political option isn’t special
enough, you simply combine two of the major ones and create a
niche movement. If you feel that isn’t special enough, you repeat the
process again, and again, and again. Any political flux which takes
place within the self-imposed boundaries of ‘modern life’ is inherently
impotent due to the fact of its implicit imprisonment. Being able to
talk openly, amidst the herd, of your political opinions without
receiving criticism, hostility, or the threat of de-platforming is proof
enough that your political stance is utterly devoid of principle, and is
nothing more than a continuation of the logic of modernity itself. For
as we’ve seen, anything deemed truly radical, dissident, odd,
extreme, or weird by the modern herd cannot even be humored due
to existing outside the bounds of modern logic; real politics is akin to
an escapee returning to Plato’s cave - but lest we forget, the
prisoners will try to kill those who return.
However, in relation to identity, politics as it’s commonly
understood still plays a key role for the crystallization of the ‘modern
self’. People get involved in politics - especially party politics -
because it both allows them to avoid taking responsibility for their
own life, and allows them to create an artificial reason for why their
life is a mess. It’s capitalism’s fault I’m overweight; if it wasn’t for
class conflict I’d be happy; I can’t get a good job because of
immigration; if only there were more X then things would be Y, and
on and on. Politics is always a presumed form/norm of utopian
idealism which thereby degrades reality. Political affiliation and
subservience in general act as a macro, collectively-signaled version
of bringing your school teacher an apple. Likewise, it’s fairly obvious
that politics functions as an elusive nation-based form of superior
schooling, thus giving its citizens a reason to sleep well at night
knowing ‘authority’ is in charge. It fulfills our desire for a teacher, a
headteacher, credentialism (government regulation), policing, and a
transcendent security structure. In fact, one could view the
government as a ‘grown up/adult’ version of highschool and very
little would change, inclusive of the tautological legitimization of
authority.
Much like schooling, contemporary red vs. blue politics equally
bolsters the logic of the modern world by way of segregation and
ostracization. In presuming the collectively agreed upon limits to
what politics ‘is’ (the Overton Window), modern political discourse
considers those found outside of its bounds as errors and not
options - much like those who might question the entire need for
school in the first place. Therefore, the act of questioning
governance itself is, by definition, anti-modern by the fact it’s
questioning the tautological logic of modernity itself. To be definitively
apolitical is to be non-modern or amodern.
As Ernst Jünger states in Eumeswil -
The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through
their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms.
This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of
the world than its shadow – the philosopher, the artist, the believer.”
(p124)
Thus dissatisfaction with the regime is itself still subservience
to the logic of regimes in abstract; one is still beholden to the
authority even if they rebel against it. This form of thinking relates
back to the falsity of positive/negative desires. For there is no one
more uniform than the punk, who in complete aesthetic retaliation
against society’s ‘norms’ merely bolsters them all the more against
his own alternativeness. Political affiliation causes the soul to rot and
wither, persistently reducing it to increasingly smaller contexts of
time, place, and issue. Until, eventually, the horizon of modern-
political-man’s vision is so stunted he can’t see past this morning’s
news; existing in political-nano-durations, he develops virtue deficit
hyperactivity disorder, an ever-present restless need to jump on the
next political bandwagon.
My political advice? Don’t begin from a state of conditions you
aren’t within. Begin from reality, and work up. Oh, you believe X
should be Y, and that A should have more of B, well they don’t, and
you being a whiny energy-sponge about the situation is only ruining
your own life. I come from a working class family, which, during my
youth would have most definitely been classified as poor. I was
afforded the same state opportunities as everyone else. I say this
because, in my lifetime, not one single political decision has made
any discernible (read: objectively noticeable in reality) difference to
mine or my immediate friend’s or family’s lives. I’ve yet to see a
single protest change anything (outside of pissing everyone off and
ruining their ideals in the process), and I’ve yet to see a single
politician not lie. Tell me, please, why in the world anyone in their
right mind would give over a single second of their time to the utter
farce which is ‘modern politics’?
It isn’t defeatist to state reality is all we have, it is - by its very
definition - realistic. One should hope and attempt to create a better
world, yes, but that begins at home, within your immediate
surroundings. Outside of this you’re only trying to appease your own
prideful need for a collective pat-on-the-back. Giving over your
personal sovereignty to a vague ‘group’ whose aims are abstract,
who never seem to change anything, and yet manage to win you
over each year despite this stasis. Politics isn’t anything special. It
isn’t above society. Politicians are workers who have cushy jobs. It’s
just another inter-modern pressure valve to allow one to perform a
rivalrous catharsis. Politics is just sports rivalries for people who like
to think they’re smart.
Money
Thus far I’ve mostly attempted to tackle the very logic of the modern
world itself, but for those still a little stuck within its supposed charms
a key issue might arise, ‘Sure, this is all well and good, but what
about money?’ The phrase ‘money is the root of all evil’ is thrown
around constantly, and without the context of its origin (1 Timothy
6:10), is usually spouted with regard to a material desire unmet on
behalf of a disgruntled modern. Anyway, this isn’t the point. In
relation to much of what I have mentioned thus far, questioning why
we do what we do, why we work where we work, etc., one might
retort that such skeptical behavior is all well and good in theory, but
when it comes to practice a man’s still gotta eat and have a roof over
his head. Here, I am in complete agreement.
If you’re reading this book correctly (though, who am I to tell
you how to read?) you’ll notice that I’m not technically anti-modernity.
At least, not externally. I don’t want people ripping down structures,
destroying things, or disturbing people’s well-earned peace and
quiet. In fact, I would go as far to say that no amount of external
change can alter the belief system of the world, such responsibility is
found with the individual, within their internal life. As such, I’m not
anti-capitalist (far from it, as many of you will know), things aren’t
free, and people need to pay their way. Money may be the root of all
evil, but that doesn’t mean that everything it touches is inherently
evil. Money is a medium of exchange. It allows us to trade things for
other things, it allows us to acquire that which we want and need
with quantitative ease. But in the sense that money is a medium of
exchange, it is merely a means, and not an end. Money is our
means to get other things or to achieve our aims. Work is (usually)
the means to which we get money. One common error modern men
make is conflating both work and money with ends in themselves.
Understood as that which ‘makes the world go round’, and that
which gives us as individuals access to all that we can afford, it is of
no surprise that money often becomes an end in itself. With people
putting in extra hours at work, taking promotions, changing careers,
and sacrificing experience all for the sake of a little more cold hard
cash. Money, we believe, will be the answer to all our worries and
concerns. I could quite easily - and lazily - cite multiple studies
showing there is a correlation between money and happiness, but
only up to roughly $75,000 per annum, seemingly ‘proving’ that after
a certain pay grade no further raises will satisfy our desires. As
interesting and telling as such studies are, I find it difficult to qualify
what exactly ‘happiness’ means to thousands of individuals. Of
course, each individual would have answered the question with
regard to their own subjective standard of ‘happiness’, but even so,
such vague language doesn’t allow such studies to really tell us
much.
Money is…peculiar. Tell someone they’re getting a raise -
however small - and they won't be able to hold back their grin;
remove money from them in a way they consider unfair and watch
them squirm; mention salaries and payments around friends and feel
palpable collective anxiety; talk to a contractor about how much
they’re owed and watch as they feign politeness. Money makes
people go weird. And despite all this weirdness, we never step back
to think about what it is we’re evening talking about.
You go to school, to get a grade, to get a job, to get a better
grade, to get a better job etc. And why is it we (usually) want to get a
better job? Because we’ll earn more money. Sure, there are those
who ‘have a vocation’, and may argue that going up the ladder in
their respective career is seen as more of a duty, as opposed to
something done with the hope of monetary reward. Very noble, now
all we need to do is ask such people if they would take on such extra
responsibilities without the extra money? Likely not. Money always
plays a factor. So, after this loop, hopefully, if the modern world has
done us well, we end up with a bit more money. Lovely. And…we
aren’t sure what to do with it, in fact, as I said earlier, we never
stopped to question why we wanted more in the first place. The
entire logical work > money loop presumes a need for further money,
which equally presumes there’s going to be further expenditure. But
what if we just…didn’t desire those things we so desire? Sound
radical? Sounds so downright simple that it simply couldn’t be? I
don’t think so, let’s step back, all the way back to poverty.
Poverty is Your Choice
I feel I’ve spent enough time on the logic of modernity now. I’ve done
my best to outline its fundamental loop, and fill in details where
needed. Most aspects of life have been overcome by this logic in
some way; one need only look around to realize that all is tainted. I
hope - in a more formalized way than my early essays at least - I’ve
uprooted the modern system, and you now find it a little more
transparent in its operations. However, this doesn’t really answer
anything. Pulling back to the ‘green curtain’ only to reveal the
strange absurdity of modern life doesn’t really help anything,
possibly from such deconstruction one can formulate new ways to
attend to life, but I’d like to draw in some basic principles in relation
to that which I’ve already spoken about. Think about this later
section as a mirror image of the first, offering a reflection of the
modern world wherein one has become detached from its elusive
orbit. It does need emphasizing here that how one comports
themselves in the modern world is entirely their own undertaking, I
can’t decide what’s best for you, whether you should quit your job, or
what color to dye your hair. I also hope that this book won't be
misconstrued as some manual for external hermit existence, political
action, or a manifesto. It isn’t that. None of this has anything to do
with the external world. The path to freedom begins with the words
Know thyself.
Assumptions
The simple truth is that I’m not you; I can tell you that various
assumptions have been made for you, I can possibly explain to you
how to deconstruct them, but I can’t tell you whether you should be a
corporate lawyer or a homesteader, a schoolteacher or a poet. I
haven’t a clue because I am not you. But, alas, there is something in
that, and it relates back to schooling.
In finding freedom in the modern world, one key undertaking is
the effort we put into unschooling ourselves. Picasso said “It took me
four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”,
equally, it took me - and most others - 12 years (mandatory) to be
schooled, and will take a lifetime to undo. It seems drastic to talk
about ‘undoing’ schooling, but once again, if you continue to conflate
the process of schooling with the actual content (knowledge), it will
appear that I’m asking you to disregard what you actually learned,
which I’m not. I’m asking you, firstly, to try undo the effects of
schooling’s methodology, and the assumptions it brings forth. In
short:
There is rarely ever certainty or security in life.
Success is entirely subjective.
You are entitled to absolute privacy.
You don’t have to get a career.
You don’t owe the state anything.
Credentials don’t equal actual knowledge.
Authority is only legitimate if you deem it to be.
If one is somewhat of an acute reader, they will have
understood these basic truths from my earlier deconstructions alone,
but here I will give a very brief overview of why these statements are
true, what such truth means in terms of how one relates to the world,
and - practically speaking - some tasks one may undertake if they
wish to begin freeing themselves from the prison cell. Or…don’t,
once again, I don’t really care what you do. So, firstly:
There is rarely ever certainty or security in life.
One of the key factors of schooling I overlooked earlier is
certainty. I explicitly ignored it, and yet it was there clear as day. If
one is to look at all of the major factors of modern schooling I
mentioned - self-policing, careers, credentials, success, and
permission - though all invasive and toxic in their own way, they all
adhere to another malicious symptom of the modern condition, the
insatiable lust for certainty, for completeness, to know that all is
under control and no stone has been left unturned.
The modern world adores certainty, and abhors spontaneity.
The logic of modernity makes it so one believes they either are
certain about something, or need to be certain about something.
‘What subjects are you going to study?’, ‘What university are you
going to?’, ‘What are you doing afterwards?’, ‘Where will you work?’,
‘What will you be?’ etc. Most of these questions are pushed onto us
at such an age where it cannot be even remotely expected of one to
understand what it is they’re agreeing to. In self-policing we are
developing a certainty of opinion (become fact); in a career one
becomes certain of a multitude of cultural and resource factors; a
credential is a (false) certainty of knowledge; ‘success’ is a certainty
of accomplishment (itself subjective); and permission is a certainty of
legitimacy. At all times, in all places, and amidst all things we are
looking for certainty, mostly as a way to put our minds at rest with
regard the question ‘Am I being normal right now?’
Modern schooling isn’t about learning, it’s about being taught.
The answer is non-negotiable. Once the answer is the answer, the
content doesn’t matter, one’s only concern is if they’re in agreement
as to appease the authorities. Thomas Pynchon once said 'If they
can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry
about answers.' it follows that if the overarching question regarding
our natural intrigue is quashed to the impetus of solely utilizing the
information to find a job, then equally, nothing that follows matters.
We often hear people state such banal platitudes as ‘What
does it matter, we could get hit by a bus tomorrow.’, or ‘You only get
one life.’ or ‘You never know when you might die.’ - Now, despite the
fact it sounds as if such people have become averse to the idea
certainty exists, actually, the opposite is true. Such statements once
again fall into the aforementioned tyranny where the modern world
accepts it doesn’t have answers for its own shallowness. And the
proclamations of ‘You only live once’ etc. are only ever to appease
some inter-modern risky attitude; such sayings are stated prior to -
shock horror - having a drink with brunch, or buying a new car, or
going on an extra holiday, they are never stated prior to an
undertaking which would be truly diverse (becoming a hermit, etc.).
When modern man emphatically proclaims You only live once!
Prior to some banal binge drinking session, in truth he is only stating
that he fears upsetting the normality of his singular life so much, that
the limit of his radicality is merely an extreme version of normal life
(yeah man, I’ll have the extra cheese, why not!)
The logical loop of modernity and the programmed guidelines
of schooling ceaselessly bolster the notion of some form of
transcendent security. If you get a grade you’ll secure a job, a job will
secure a house, a house will be secure etc. And, despite continual
evidence to the contrary, many people fall for this idea and have to
attempt to uphold the contradiction as everything tumbles down
around them. Likewise, with respect to certainty, a large amount of
our mediated knowledge amounts to little more than faith in the guise
of certainty. With various credentialed ‘experts’ or ‘professionals’
declaring various ‘facts’ which we agree to at face-value due to their
position of authority.
Humans don’t learn from history, this much we know. But one
thing we actively push against allowing ourselves to even see is that
things end, empires crumble, nations fall, and all which is held as
falsely eternal will one day collapse. On the macro level of nations
this is rarely ever any specific generation’s concern. The collapse of
empires takes hundreds of years, and right now we’re at the
beginning of the end of ours. But in relation to the micro level of
human ongoings, even relatively recent societal and cultural
phenomena are held as absolute. Schooling, plumbing, electricity,
automobiles, credentials, computers, and the internet are all held to
be absolute mainstays of social life, despite the fact each one of
these has been around for less than 200 years, with some finding
traction only within the last 30. We’re quick to forget the past in our
ever-present lust for certainty, and in doing so we trap ourselves
within ever-constrained perspectives, limiting our own potential in the
name of internal comfort.
Success in entirely subjective
This isn’t something I should need to explain, but here we are, in a
world of homogenized success and ambition. Success: the
accomplishment of an aim or purpose. That’s the definition, but the
problem then lies in the fact that most moderns either don’t have any
aims, or, their purpose has been defined by the logic of modernity
itself. What one considers success is subjective. As to not fall into
becoming some motivational guru book, I’ll let you figure out what
success means, no more needs to be said here.
You don’t have to get a career
Once one internalizes that success is subjective, the very notion of
getting a career may (or may not) be flung out the window. Now that
one’s notion of success is critical of modernity’s logic, it finds itself
free from the restraints of productivity and normality; no longer
beholden to appeasing the collective need for one to be ‘in on it’, the
future opens in a multitude of new directions. What once were
merely dreams, fantasies, absurdities or errors become genuine
possibilities. Despite this piece of advice being seemingly obvious,
many people overlook it or actively disregard in relation to some
perceived societal sunk cost. I’ve personally known and met
multitudes of people throughout my working life who continue to
work in positions causing them misery, anxiety, and boredom due to
the fact they put time into getting there. Likewise, multitudes of
graduates find themselves clinging on to soul-destroying office jobs
for the sake of ‘utilizing their education’, as opposed to admitting to
their preference for a job socially deemed lesser. Using the sunk cost
of normality (wishing to appear normal), education, or time as their
excuse, many people simply indulge in their misery as a means to
avoid upsetting the atmosphere of their internal prison cell. Once
again, the reluctance to take such an (apparently) bold leap is itself
based upon another’s idea of failure. It’s rarely the case that one
believes they will fail themselves - as they could just as easily pick
up some or other job - but that they visualize somehow failing
society, and looking like a fool for turning their back upon all which is
deemed normal. Normal, again, being good because it’s normal.
Credentials don’t equal actual knowledge
This same form of collective agreement (X is good because lots of
people agree with X, or, argumentum ad populum) carries over into
credentialism. In fact, it’s the very fuel which turns credentials,
awards, and certificates into the equivalent of some form of
transcendent knowledge. E.g. If someone has X-award, or Y-
certification they must have knowledge by the very fact they have the
certification. Of course, anyone who’s reached adulthood within the
modern world knows this to be untrue. More often than not our
queries, problems, and practical faults aren’t solved by paying a
‘professional’. The fault in the car returns, the pipe under the sink
leaks once more, the washing machine still rattles, your anxiety
hasn’t gone away, and your back pain still persists. Often - though
not always - despite handing our agency over to experts,
professionals, and people with awards, we are still left with our initial
problems. It’s at this juncture that our relationship with such notions
of credentialism becomes quite tyrannical. Once we come to believe
that certain credentialed people are the be-all-and-end-all with
regard to their respective fields, in failing to ‘cure our ills’ or fix our
problems, we’re left entirely without recourse for a solution. For from
the logic of credentialism anyone who isn’t officially ‘credentialed’
(whatever that means) is a quack, a hack, or just plain wrong, and so
if the experts can’t fix our problems, then who can?
Turns out we can do what people have been doing for
centuries, we can decide to not outsource our problems to a
thousand-and-one experts and actually take responsibility for
ourselves and our property. The modern world is a narcissistic
dreamland. If you’re a mean spirited, angry, and selfish person
whose house is falling apart, it needn’t matter, we have a
credentialed person to come and let you off the hook for each and
every practical and psychological fault; in offloading all responsibility
to a third-party, man is once again free to go fuck himself up some
more - rinse, and repeat.
Credentials undoubtedly have many upsides (see my essay:
The Modernity Mindset – Part 2: Schooling in Exiting Modernity), but
in short, their very existence allows us to rest easy in the certified
belief that our electrical outlets won't shock us, our toilet won't leak,
and our food won't poison us. But the more we unconsciously rely on
external ‘proofs’, the more we deny our internal experience. Or, in
the words of Robert Heinlein (in Time Enough for Love)
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet,
balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take
orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a
new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal,
fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
In this sense, we can begin to understand freedom as being
empirically reliant on our range of qualitative experiences. With
regard to the average modern, in being filed down by the schooling
system into a single ‘field’, and, in being continually promoted within
that field, their experience becomes more and more niche,
eventually exists within a singular spectrum of experience (business,
law, mechanics etc.), and they feel they daren’t venture outside of
this for fear of - once again - failure.
A thought experiment: If two people of the same competency
both perform the required tasks and training needed to ‘be’ a
competent mechanic, plumber, farmer, programmer, accountant, etc.
But, if one of these people doesn’t do so within an institution legally
allowed to hand out credentials, are they any different in actual
ability? The answer is no. The point is - You can likely do most of the
things you outsource, you’ve just programmed yourself to believe
you can’t. And, in believing such, enter into voluntary servitude to a
multitude of institutions, people, and contracts you are reliant on to
fix things you could fix yourself.
You are entitled to privacy
After internalizing the idea that various micro-aggressions are
entirely ok if performed on behalf of legitimate authority, one enters
life with an overwhelming acceptance of a multitude of boundary-
breaking societal habits. This mostly falls under the guise of digital
surveillance, which in turn is defended by leaning on the
aforementioned desire for security and certainty. Once again, such a
defense of this form of invasion of privacy is tautological - ‘It’s ok
because it’s the state, and the state being the state must have my
best interests at heart.’ Itself buying into the false dichotomy of ‘If
you have nothing to hide, why do you care about privacy?’ - You are
either with us or against us. Based on the premise that privacy’s sole
function is to stop wrongdoing, this relationship, with respect to
individual privacy, places one in the position of either a dissident or a
good government lackey. Whereby the state, in forcing your hand to
state you in fact do have something to hide (because it’s
embarrassing or just plain personal) forces you to feel as if you owe
them an explanation as to why you have something to hide at all.
Much like the absurdity of requiring a reason as to why you were late
to class (once the assumption of schooling is stripped away), the
presumption on behalf of the state in terms of intrusions of privacy
can be countered with the statement ‘This is none of your business!’
You don’t owe the state anything
You may have noticed throughout this book that I have zero affection
or support for the state. Whether or not the state is its own empirical
entity, or arises solely from the logic of modernity, or is in some way
a synthesis of both isn’t something I can thoroughly answer. In
dealing with the state, and as such in dealing with schooling, one is
entering into a discussion with something which is always trying to
evade capture and questioning. Justifying its existence by recourse
to its own logic alone, any legitimate questioning of the reality of the
state is immediately subsumed under the definition of dissidence,
rebellion, or radicality. And henceforth is either heavily policed, or
socially ostracized due to the fact it’s considered not normal. You
don’t owe the state anything, because you never consented to give
them anything, be it time, money, energy, land, or values. In the
words of Hans-Hermann Hoppe:
“No, the state is anything but the result of a contract! No one with
even just an ounce of common sense would agree to such a
contract. I have a lot of contracts in my files, but nowhere is there
one like this. The state is the result of aggressive force and
subjugation. It has evolved without contractual foundation, just like a
gang of protection racketeers. And concerning the struggle of all
against all: that is a myth.”
Any allegiance to the state can be considered only an
extremely insidious collective version of stockholm syndrome.
Wherein the herd which finds themselves born into the ruling of the
state eventually come to not only develop feelings of affection for the
state in question but actually end up defending its abusive actions.
The contemporary form of allegiance to the state (especially in the
west) isn’t even performed with regard to nationalism or patriotism,
but done for sake of normality alone. Amidst the rising tide of
globalism archaic symbols of specifically national support, be they
flags, anthems, cuisine, history, customs, or style, are being
homogenized into a falsely defined multicultural pulp. Compressed to
such a degree that all singular cultures are refined into a single
monoculture, itself only aspiring to bolster the accelerative logic of
modernity. Appeasing or even pleasing the state, then, amounts to
little more than being a good boy or girl and doing what you’re told.
With the state’s legitimization amounting to nothing more than the
classical parental retort ‘Because I said so!’
One might ask that if such is the case, and the state has
solidified itself to the degree hereby articulated, then isn’t any form of
anti-state action rendered impotent? One would be correct in
affirming this, but they would be incorrect in assuming that such a
position would be one I would ever agree with. Following Hoppe’s
logic in his book Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), one
needs to understand that any radical anti-state action only ever
bolsters the (false) legitimacy of the state. In relation to what I have
already mentioned with respect to both security and privacy, any
destabilizing action is the state’s much-needed proof of its existence.
‘See! Look what happens when we don’t have control!’ And so, what
is to be done? For an answer to this we can turn to Hoppe once
more:
The decision to secede involves that one regard the central
government as illegitimate, and that one accordingly treat it and its
agents as an outlaw agency and "foreign" occupying forces. That is,
if compelled by them, one complies, out of prudence and for no other
reason than self-preservation, but one does nothing to support or
facilitate their operations. (p91)
I would utilize Hoppe’s form of secession in relation to the
aforementioned discussions on internality and externality. Such a
form of succession (in my opinion) begins externally, and thus
protrudes into the external by way of intuiting illegitimacy. The more
people who consistently exit their internal prison cell with respect to
the notion of state rule, the fewer people there are who continue to
bolster the elusive psychic entity we define as ‘the modern state’. In
short, following Hoppe, don’t work, volunteer, or do anything even on
behalf of the state, do nothing which bends the knee to its false
claims of legitimacy.
Authority is only legitimate if you deem it to be
What gives any authority its legitimacy is ultimately down to the
individual in question. Unfortunately, the question of how one can
begin to understand the very concept of ‘legitimacy’ is extremely lost
within the modern world. Once parental responsibility is overthrown
by state servitude, which is largely forthwith considered normal and
right, the very notion of questioning authority only appears from
within an unquestioned authority. The great irony of state education
is that one of its more recent touchstones is ‘Being independent!’. Of
course, such independence can’t be taught in such a way as to
remove its dependence on the state. Once again, an inbuilt tyranny
whereby one is given the illusion of freedom from within the prison
cell itself.
Within the concept of legitimacy, we see a synthesis of
schooling’s primary foundations: credential, authority figure, and
state. Each becoming synonymous with each other, one slowly
learns to not question various credentials be they law, education, or
state official. This unquestioning behavior is bolstered by the fact the
person in question is collectively deemed an ‘authority figure’, and
solidified even more by the fact such person is a ‘state official’. Once
again mirroring our obedience to a teacher for the tautological
reasons we’ve already seen. So in truth, what one is doing when
they bow down to a worldly authority or state official, is, in truth,
policing themselves.
Undoing Self-Policing
Social media is the next in a long line of societal options which has
since become quietly mandatory. People assume that one will be
able to be ‘contacted’ via some social media platform, that there will
exist somewhere online an artificial CV of that person’s life ready for
public consumption. In short, in entering into various social media
networks which have no specific preference (hobby forum); one
enters solely into the form of modernity simulation I mentioned
earlier. One wherein each user can sculpt their virtual mirror image
to a degree unattainable in real life. Ultimately, one is simply entering
into a network of envy, jealousy, and pride, wherein each action is
undertaken for the sake of bolstering one’s self-image, proving one
is normal, or parading external experiences as signified proof of
one’s status as a modern person.
In entering into the social media theater of comparison, one
merely weighs their own life up against the false, displayed lives of
other people. First and foremost, the lives and experiences they
believe themselves to be missing out on are mere highlight reels,
curated images, and videos to prove the person in question is happy,
content, normal, etc. Secondly, the collective promotion of
homogenized modern experiences - brunches, holidays, beaches,
food pics, etc. - only continues to bolster an innate fear of missing
out within the viewer. Such fear of missing out may be entirely
unfounded in relation to what any individual wants, but due to the
social acceptance and normalization of selected modern
experiences, the masses largely feel compelled to do that which they
never question.
Social media turns life into an abstract competition. The only
rule is to play, and to ‘win’ is to amass artificial popularity. In reality,
it’s a competition one never chose to enter, in a race towards
rewards one never cared for. All the while this very same race grinds
one’s attention span to a pulp, increases anxiety, depression, and
jealousy, normalizes narcissism, develops insecurity, and quantifies
the quality. Millions of people exist within the contradiction of
acquiring thousands of friends and likes, and yet still spending most
of their time sitting alone staring at their phone screen, waiting for
the next notification to vindicate the ever-increasing expanse in their
soul.
Smartphones
If you live within the modern, western world, then it’s highly likely any
experienced poverty is subjective, and thus an idealistic choice
against reality. Objective poverty is the foundation of existence, man
began amidst the wilderness and slowly developed the technological
and socio-cultural foundation we all now consider to be normal. We
could, at any time, return to such a state of objective poverty. It’s
unlikely, but it’s possible. Anything beyond one’s immediate needs is
optional. This appears to be a drastic statement, however, the
average contemporary US household has 300,000 possessions,
whereas an average household in the 1500s had less than 1000.
One might argue that such a comparison is absurd due to the
emphatically different contexts. The point isn’t to be understood with
respect to returning to tradition, whereby I believe that returning to a
previous time would be better for us. It’s meant to be understood that
the life of the average Joe from history was one of bare necessity,
floating just above objective poverty. Were these people unhappy? I
would argue that they were not, and to believe such an idea is once
again to buy into the distinctly modern idea that history progresses.
The belief that one needs material goods beyond objective poverty is
one built from a presumption of comfort, pleasure, and generic
quality of life. I wish to present such assumptions neutrally, allowing
the reader to declare them as good or bad for themselves. The point
is - as we’ve seen - that a collective artificial standard of poverty
imposes a societal pressure of conformity onto modern man, thus
pushing him to unquestioningly consume, and thus become further
dependent on various institutions.
All consumption is a choice. Such choices are based upon the
belief that said consumption will improve one’s quality of life. This
quality of life is likely based upon a ‘generic’, unquestioned standard
of living programmed into you from birth. From this neutral position,
one can begin to understand that the life of a hermit needn’t be
perceived as deficient, nor needn’t the life of a millionaire be viewed
as a material goal. The spectrum isn’t critiqued, as much as its
falsely collective, objective value system is destroyed altogether.
Who are others to decide how you are to live?
To Consume, To Hold, To Give
Once again beginning from the most neutral position one can
manage, one can begin to ask themselves - as a task, as an
exercise, as a duty - Who is my king? Who - or what - is it you bend
the knee to? What is it you adore and idolize? What is it you perhaps
unknowingly put before all other things? What is it you have faith in
despite the fact it hasn’t once made you content? For in the words of
David Foster Wallace -
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships.
The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling
reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to
worship...is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you
alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real
meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you
have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure
and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing,
you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one
level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths,
proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of
every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily
consciousness." (This is Water)
Those of the secular or atheistic camp might feel that using the
language of worship and faith in relation to material matters is
unfounded or ignorant. Yet, faith is simply a conviction in something,
confidence without ‘proof’. Moderns tend to turn their noses up at
such ideas because they’ve acquired a worldview which affords
them certainty at all times. The notions of science, facts, and data
allow them to believe they are always correct, despite ever genuinely
being able to prove much of what they hear for themselves.
In truth, man never has, and never will, get beyond God and
gods. For as many have faith in God; the masses have faith in gods,
the idols of old which return time and time again: money, power,
fame, and attraction, to name but a few. They believe that their belief
in such things is not a matter of faith, but one of fact. They believe if
they acquire enough money they’ll be happy, if they gain enough
power they’ll feel in control, and if they draw enough of a crowd that
they’ll finally feel secure. And yet, such is not the case. Money
doesn’t buy happiness, all empires fall, and the famous are
forgotten. We worship such idols as a matter of faith, with the belief
itself being the force that keeps us believing, despite evidence to the
contrary. Our material kings betray us each and every second, and
yet we continue to forgive them in hope that one day the itch will be
scratched. The great irony is that one needs to usurp the throne of
their own mind, exit through the open door, delegitimize the king, and
move onwards from a position of found contentment.
The Figure of the Anarch
As I’ve stated many times throughout this text, I never want to tell
you what to do. It would be hypocritical to do as much. However, this
doesn’t deny a palpable frustration being developed inside the
reader as to just what it is they are now meant to do. Or, more aptly,
how it is they are now to be. It’s extremely difficult, after having the
rug pulled from under your feet, to find some sort of balance and get
your bearings. One doesn’t want to accidentally jump feet first into
yet another bunch of constraining presumptions. So, what is to be
done, and how are we to be?
There is a figure in literature that isn’t exactly well known, is
extremely divisive, notably explosive, quiet, reserved, forthwith, and
notoriously difficult to ‘pin down’. I am speaking of the figure of ‘The
Anarch’ as found in Ernst Jünger’s novel Eumeswil. As far as I’m
concerned, the Anarch is the greatest ‘political contribution’ of the
last 45 years. When we begin to remove ourselves from
presumptions, and the logic of modernity itself, in truth we are
becoming detached. There is no one more detached than the
Anarch. And yet, there is no one more acutely aware of the world
than the Anarch.
The positive counterpart of the anarchist is the anarch. The latter is
not the adversary of the monarch, but his antipode, untouched by
him though also dangerous. He is not the opponent of the monarch,
but his pendant. After all, the monarch wants to rule many, nay, all
people; the anarch, only himself. (p43)
Where the anarchist is throwing bombs, making placards, and
attaching themselves to the latest-and-greatest political noise, the
Anarch is taking a snapshot of the horizon, taking his notes, and
stepping back to his internal domain. The Anarch, like Tolkien’s Tom
Bombadil from The Fellowship of the Ring, has carved out a space -
fully internal, possibly external - over which he is sovereign. Amidst
the turbulence and smoke of modernity’s incessant continuation, the
Anarch always retains himself. The Anarch is entirely un-identified;
he is not indifferent, but he is impartial. He is, possibly, engaged, but
he is simultaneously conscious of his engagement, and thus is able
to step out at any time, nothing is crystallized and assumed. And yet,
he is not apathetic, not pathetic as is the case of the cynic who
bemoans his life; he is proactive in renouncing all which seeks to
overwhelm his internal freedom. It takes strength to be an Anarch,
the heart of a patrician, and a memory out of time. One must be
ready to be their own anchor, amidst seas of -isms, -ologies, and -
aries, the Anarch resounds and something entirely disjointed and
out-of-time.
‘...as an anarch, I am on my guard’ (p73) - He is ready. Not in
the manner of one whose sword is drawn and teeth are gritted, but
he who is ready to avoid attachments and sympathies to collective
abstractions, a sovereign armor that keeps freedom from being lost.
He who remains free of all commitments yet can turn in any
direction. (p99), uprooted presumptions are not stamped upon nor
killed, only delegitimized by swiftly walking away without a care for
their pomposity. Any further exposition on how to be an Anarch
seems fruitless; needless external complexity to explain something
internally simple. The Anarch, in the world, but not of it.
The anarch nurtures no expectations. (p168)
This World