“One young man in particular is finishing his bachelor’s in psychology. He is so similar to me as a young man that there are rumors floating about he may be my child, but lately just a clone. He is idealistic, wanting to help people with drug dependency. The main problem I see is his reluctance to read outside of his required subjects. He told me that in his family he is the odd duck, the only academic in his tribe. I told him of my own desire to self educate myself as a young man.
“My main question to you James is what can I say to a promising bright kid that is going to receive doses of pain that awaits him in the real world?”
-Ishmael
Ishmael, this question has been bothering me a great deal, as it is a question I have never considered answering. Let me back up and get us on the footing we started out on when you first contacted me through this tiny portal on the World Insane. Be warned, 99 of 100 people will disagree with this advice. Of course two thirds of those would disagree with the premise of your question, that a liberal college education intended to serve* the greater secular good, is essentially a moral dead end.
Of course, this is all just my crackpot opinion.
*This word finds its way into more and more mainstream discourse and casual commentary as our deluded society reels drunkenly on.
The Big Picture
We are anomalous white men in that we still—partially through our visceral rejection of feminist, African and Asian values, and partially due to our extensive unstructured reading—seek the world after the manner of our ancestors. The Western World, and its values has drifted geographically west since about 5,000 years ago, with its center now in Nebraska, I think. Broadly speaking Western Man, or the Whiteman, or our European heritage has more in common with primal societies such as the Native American and Polynesian, then it does with African or Asian [including the Near East] cultures. The reason for the deep guilt that the whitest of white men seem to feel for extinguishing the Indians has to do with the fact that we have fallen prey to that same unifying, materialistic, anthill society force that our ancestors served when they wiped out the natives of what was supposed to become our country.
Broadly speaking, the defiant racial spirit that drove our ancestors to leave Europe—which had been subdued by the perverse Roman material order and its political descendents—was the yearning to be something more than cog in a machine, something more than an ant in an anthill. This was a vestigial primal characteristic that had not been entirely snuffed out by Rome. The two pillars of this mindset among the European defectors—who essentially left the system-oriented elites behind to be swallowed up by the submissive faiths of atheism and Islam—that found common ground with stone age peoples they encountered was the essential belief that no greater human system would come between a man and the natural world. Egypt, Rome and other extra-tribal systems went to great lengths to separate man from his environment. The Arenas were Rome’s temples to Domesticated Man, in which Nature’s most powerful creatures were ritually exterminated.
When the men of such denaturing systems clashed against men living in tribal systems—for instance against the Germans or the Jews—then the tribalists generally prevailed wherever numbers and logistics were not overwhelming. The problem is that the denaturing extra-tribal systems produce massive population and resource surpluses which can, and have always, been expended to extinguish the natural tribal systems. So human history has been a litany of mass snuffing out quality, except for those brief spasms of European adventure when tiny groups of men took down large collectivist societies. In the big picture the frontiersman who is happy to return to an authentic life living essentially like an aborigine, is the tip of the systemic spear that will eventually follow him to extinguish his enemy and then him, and ultimately his legacy.
That is where we are now, Ishmael. That young man, who is averse to reading anything outside of the One-world-mind addiction/human helplessness template is being willfully indoctrinated into the mega brain that has grown on the space conquered by those attempting to escape it. People may buy into the One-world-mind through any extra-tribal faith or ideology such as Atheism, Christianity or Islam. For, although his indoctrinated mind sees these as competing value systems, they are simply alternative faces for the same soul-eating machine. The gravity of the emerging system, which I suspect will supersede humanity at some point in its evolution, is apparent in the epics of Gilgamesh, The Iliad and Beowulf. I see the eventual growth of a pure machine, discarding people altogether. This machine eats not just the individual but his culture, his tribe, digesting it into an ever more viable system of homogenized behavior.
The Small Picture
I don’t believe in trying to fight the machine, but stay apart from it. Key to this is my aversion to trying to correct the self-destructive and soul-destroying behavior of others, up to and including my family. I have in no way tried to affect the behavior of my sons in a manner to convince them to see the world my way. They are both entirely engulfed by the machine, believe that stuff is life and that Dad is crazy. I have simply let them know subtly, that if life turns against them I will be there.
Below are some of my rules for sanely viewing the world and its inmates.
1. I do not discuss things of substance with those who vote, are addicted to drugs, watch TV as the centerpiece of their leisure activity, attend college, or otherwise engage in some aspect of the mass delusion. These forms of One-world-mind control are implemented by the most powerful political forces to ever rule the earth, and are, more importantly, loved and believed in by those engaged in the behavior. Once the human impulse to know has been successfully hijacked by the systemic demands to believe, there is no hope, only danger to yourself in attempting to jump start the arrested thought process of one who believes himself to be thinking.
2. I never try and save suicides. I once watched from an arm length as a man stepped in front of a city bus. The driver stopped in time and fixed me with a castigating gaze. The suicidal impulse, is to me, sacred. It is the means by which an almost consumed soul, who has not the strength to defy the One-world-mind, escapes its clutches. Saving their body would throw them back into the evil clutches of the state, which will place additional controls on them.
3. I never try to cure drug addiction in others. Drug addiction is a seeking of oblivion, an attempt to escape the hell of the One-world-mind. Growth of the One-world-mind and the loss of tribal and family structures has been mirrored by drug addiction. Drug addiction is like a ceasefire between the individual and the system, with the individual gaining distance from the internal intrusion of the system into his mind, but also giving up his body and social freedoms in large measure to the gross force-applying aspects of the system. In my mind, your young friend’s quest to cure addicts is a mission to return tormented souls to the machine, which currently only has control of their bodies and social range. To me that young man is enlisting as a foot soldier in the war against the human soul.
4. I never attempt to modify behavior except for purposes of immediate survival and in pursuit of warrior rituals, which are sacral. I became a manipulator of consummate skill while managing 110 down-trodden souls in order for my employer to extract material gain from their modified behavior. I found the process to be toxic and will no longer engage in it. Modification of behavior in the combat arts is my task as a coach. This process is in fact the act of assisting a person to remain free in some aspect from the overweening system they are enslaved to through modification of their own behavior.
I realize that this is not much of an answer, Ishmael. In such situations I drop a few hints that if the young person’s pursuit becomes something different than what was promised, that I will be available as a sounding board, and perhaps an advisor if my knowledge overlaps with their plight. I have a friend who is in love with a crack whore who steals from him and blows other men in crack houses to get high. I have never tried to talk him out of his relationship. He is lost, and until he wants to be found and sends out a call, I will not answer.
In the case of this young fellow, his refusal to read outside of his ideological pursuit marks him as normal, as most readers—rare as they are—are one-subject readers. Perhaps he is a person who intuitively knows that he does not have the requisite strength of character to battle the system in his mind. Most people will, Ishmael, be driven insane, or into drug addiction, by the truth. This weekend I was exposed to network TV and heard lie, upon lie, upon lie promulgated as truth by news casters. I can choose to believe and stay connected, choose to disbelieve, stay connected, and become increasingly mad to the point of hostility, or I can disbelieve and disconnect, which I have done. Disconnection, for many, brings about insanity as surely as being connected to a lie brings it about in others. We divide into herd and rogue along Lovecraftian lines.
Unless he asks for a book, don’t offer it. Your friend is embracing the world-spanning enemy of your soul, of the legacy of your ancestors, who were some of the few people that had escaped extra-tribal brainwashing by becoming refugees in a new land.
What I would suggest is that you keep a few book titles, and a few lines of advice, in mind and stay in contact with him, and when he gives you that, “I just found out it was all a lie,” phone call you could make a suggestion or pass on a small useful truth.
As members of the last generation of Americans of European descent to come of age before feminism, materialism, and the worship of the African American Man as the model of sacral pseudo-masculinity, replaced our heritage, our outlooks and opinions will only resonate with the select few individuals of succeeding generations who have somehow managed to escape the thought control system that has evolved to cut us off from our past.
Good luck.
This was solid, James. Thank you from a lurking stranger who enjoys your ribald honesty.
At JamesLafond.com we value our lurking strangers.
Lurk on, Sir.
'Once the human impulse to know has been successfully hijacked by the systemic demands to believe, there is no hope, only danger to yourself in attempting to jump start the arrested thought process of one who believes himself to be thinking.'
This reminds me how deeply secular culture is still locked in Christian modes of thought. It requires belief in absurdities, whatever the correct ideology happens to be. Whereas the knower is a heretic, as knowers have always been. You yourself being something of a little-g gnostic, James.
A little g-gnostic? That finds appeal in my heretical heart.
For the record, I like religion at a tribal level, because, in my mind, the best aspects of the religious experience are the allegories and myth, which is more meaningful within the cultural context. When religions are adapted to universalist ambitions then they loose a lot of substance for the believer. I recently read two books on Islamic scholars. When Islam was still primarily an Arab expression I was astonished at how much more evolved these earlier tinkers were than those who came along after the rise of the Turks.
Belief in absurdities, I suppose, is the litmus test applied by the ambitious to the complaisant to root out the subversive minds.
Thanks James. Ishmael.
James,
I found your insight into many of the subjects that you touched upon in your reply to Ishmael to be dead on. College...especially to a young man is just a combination play pen, drunk tank, Maoist self critique center and student loan shackle. I have recently started attending the local institution of "higher learning" aka community college at age 36. So, I have some first hand knowledge of these matters, unfortunately. If I had done so at age 18-19 I would have missed out on the years of free (self-directed) reading that I was able to do at the Main Branch of the Enoch Pratt. Years worth of early 20th and late 19th century newspapers and random books written by the denizens of more enlightened now maligned eras.
This coupled with travel to 3rd world countries and fortuitous meetings with "old cranks" (to the current over cultures way of thinking) while working various menial jobs gave me an education that cannot be taken away. I certainly don't buy into the societal programming sent my way.
Good lord...Just rented my Biology text for the semester. Skimmed through it. The last portion of the book concentrates on "Man Made Global Warming". Last semester I took a Psychology Class. Practically an entire chapter was devoted to Transsexuals and Homosexuality.
None of these subjects are pertinent to the material being presented. It is all a form of cultural indoctrination and brainwashing. Four more years on top of the other twelve that are compulsory in these United States. Ishmael's friend will either have his own personal revelation about these matters....Or he won't. Sixteen years of schooling/indoctrination coupled with the 24/7 media culture do not give me hope. Frankly, the young man in question might be better off swimming in the direction that society has dictated for him. Ignorance is certainly bliss in many ways. I pray for him as I pray for all of the young crackers I see these days.
Thank you, Sir.
I will pray for the young crackers as well.
I agreed with everything you said James. In trying to save some of my family members from the drug cult I have wasted thousand of dollars , valuable time and youth, lost relationships, look at as the bad guy and felt like that I've lost some of my soul and sanity.
Recently the shining armor has came off and I feel so much better now. My hope for Ishmael clone is that with Ishmael leadership he can turn his self around before he gets too far down the road to nowhere. Props to you James for so eloquently putting into words the way a lot of men feel.
I understand your position, SAWB. I have lost five extended family members to addiction, and, in the process of trying to save them from themselves and the sick system, each of those nuclear families suffered terribly, losing material, health, and peace of mind.
I ripped my own family apart by kicking my oldest son out on the street when he decided to get high. I did this primarily to set an example for the youngest. But, instead of partying his first decade of adulthood away like our culture suggests, and which he was prepared to do, he immediately got a job and has been a hard working man ever since. I honestly thought he was doomed when I kicked him out and was trying to save the uncontaminated son. But to my joy, the simple act of kicking him out made partying so inconvenient a lifestyle that he decided to set things right himself.
This is another example from experience that mothering is the worst thing that can be done to a young man.
Tell him there's no money in psychology, that trying to help addicts is pointless and that there's much more money to be earned in the trades.
Psychology is an absolutely-pointless dead-end degree.
Brilliant, a perfect exposition of the relationship between pack and herd forms of life. I am becoming increasingly unable to exist within the system. I always appreciate you highlighting lines of departure!
If you havn't previously you should check out the works of Pierre Clastres. He was a French anthropologist who hypothesized that primitive man structured society implicitly to prevent the formation of a state/ the system . He rejected the idea that the state suddenly appeared on scene and instead argued it was something that was known and deliberately held at bay by men with tribal/warrior instincts in primtive society.
I will search his work.
Thanks so much for the info.
I have a similar theory that I present in Taboo You, that the band is a nascent mini-state that needs certain types of men to achieve cohesion against animals and other humans, and other types of men to keep the cohesive element from becoming toxic.