Amerika

“Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

Commentators and thinkers in the Alternative Right often like to compare the accelerating decline of Anglo-Saxon civilization to Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity” event, but substituting equality for artificial intelligence. This “Left-Singularity”, or the point at which leftism explodes into full nihilism, while a useful concept, misses much about our current cultural overlords. “Equality”, though a very important ideological concept of the left, is losing ground to, and will eventually be consumed by, pure French existentialism.

Existentialism is a postmodern philosophy that posits that human existence is prior to everything, and places an individual squarely at the center of the universe. Existence — the mere fact of your being, Heidegger’s Dasein — precedes every other concept or category. Existentialism then goes on to posit, as a logical corollary of its central statement that meaning is individual, unique, and relative, and can be constructed solely by the individual. This means, essentially, that the only two concepts that really fundamentally matters in the existentialist worldview are Authenticity, the unique meaning that the individual gives to himself, and Will, the self-direction that a man uses to propel himself towards authenticity and meaning. We are simply self-directed Wills, floating along through the endless dark of the void-sea, in search of our own authentic experience.

Such a plastic view of existence has many implications, and it should not come as a shock that the later French existentialists were almost all hard leftists. Atheism is also an inevitable byproduct of existentialism.

At some point after the Second World War, existentialism began to seep into leftist thinking, or perhaps its seed had always been there. Nevertheless, instead of the inevitable, cold historicity of Marx, therapeutic self-direction emerged. Anyone who has gone to school in the United States can recall being repulsed by ridiculous slogans about “being yourself” or “everyone is special” – both of which are profoundly Existentialist statements.

The result of this focus is that the two primary goods that leftism sees in the world are increasingly becoming will, self- meaning and authenticity. Any force that suppresses the will’s attempt to will itself towards meaning and authenticity is Bad And Oppressive, like the fact that skirts are sold in the women’s department of a store, or that people make fun of you for wearing a My Little Pony T-shirt. Meaning and authenticity are self-created- each person is a special snowflake who is the only entity capable of determining what the good is. There is no Good, True and Beautiful, only meaning and authenticity limited to each individual.

These concepts have been oozing into mainstream cultural leftism and are beginning to dominate over older narratives about equality. The gushing comments over a YouTube video of a child opening his first package of powerful estrogen hormones in order to “transition” are illustrative of this. The presumptions of the “wow so brave” crowd are:

1. A person’s existence is prior and a person is just self-directed will seeking meaning;
2. Your will seeks out authenticity on its own inherently, and it has perfect knowledge of this authentic meaning, and attempts to disrupt the will from this path are bad;
3. All people, including children have such a will;

Unfortunately for those of us who still have an attachment to the Good, True and Beautiful, the above argument is essentially an argument for drug use, vice-as-lifestyle and ultimately, pedophilia. Who are we to prevent people, even children, from living their “best life”, shitlord?

The motto of the assassins in Bartol’s novel Alamut was “Nothing is an absolute reality, all is permitted.” Anything that restricts or even makes the will feel bad about its radical “self-actualization” will be attacked and torn down. True authenticity, however, is never something one can discover through egoistic attachment to the physical, but through spiritual experience and transcendence.

And that is the cruel irony of the new Existentialist movement, be it trans-sexualism or pedophile-acceptance- is that they will never feel complete, never feel truly authentic. Meaning will ring hollow to them. And so the quest will accelerate, and this will get far worse before it gets better.

We may not be in Existentialist hell yet, but we are approaching it.

Tags: alternative right, anglo-saxon civilization, authenticity, existentialism, hell, ray kurzweil, vladimir bartol