The end result of the Enlightenment.

Readership: All
Theme: Awareness and Introspection
Length: 850 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes

In a previous post, Frustrated Collective Catharsis as an Incentive for Social Unrest (2022/7/29), I described how the misguided PTB subtly contrive widespread frustration among the populace, and sow discontentment among the proles.

It was assumed that the resulting social unrest experienced by modrens is the whole purpose of it all.

“A generation ago, a man’s attachment to his family gave him the motivation to be a high achiever; today, the feminist / sexual revolution has made this attachment to his family the cause of his becoming a panicky underachiever.”

Fish Eaters Chapter III: The Patriarchal System: Putting Sex to Work.

As long as Bob Baker, Ernie Electrician, and Paul Plumber are uncertain of the future, worried about paying bills, and wondering if they’ll still be married next year, then the PTB can rest assured that there will be little individual effort to enlarge the common man’s domain nor will there be any collective action to change the status quo from being in their favor.

But upon further reflection, I see that even the most wholesome intentions to recreate Meaning would be frustrated without a central cultural (or sub-cultural) social Mythos.

It is not just the presumably corrupt PTB who are creating this distention. What we are looking at is the end culmination of the full fruits of the Enlightenment — Nihilism.

In the Nihilism of late-stage capitalism, there is no Mythos, no plot, no spectacle, no larger purpose … only a quasi-contented coexistence without Meaning.  If one is somehow dissatisfied with the materialistic comforts of Capitalism, left unsoothed by the lullaby of complacency, and is piqued by this lack of Meaning, then this paradigm is experienced as frustration.

Thus, rather than creating a collective catharsis, it may very well be that the MGM and the PTB are only feeding the masses an affirmation of their despondency.

This conclusion resonates with what commenter Arch Angel wrote some time ago.

“I think nihilism in general is borne of a mechanistic outlook on the world and life. In our era, it results from scientism (or empiricism or verification-ism, taken too far). As they can hardly be quantified or observed in a lab, nihilism tends to a disbelief in the beautiful, transcendent, or idealistic things in the world. For proof that we’ve come to see everything (even religion and aesthetics) scientifically, see how scientists now decide who the world’s most beautiful woman is, scientifically!

The effects of this worldview (which many Christians have adopted) have been largely negative. In its wake we see the attempted erasure of metaphysics, the relativization of ethics, the decline of art and religion, et cetera.

As life has lost its beauty, men’s idealism, naked and homeless, has taken refuge in women. At present, women and romantic love are a retreat from the ‘ugly realities’ of life. In fact, romantic love may be thought of as the cult of women, aimed at men’s expression of adoration for them. As we cling to our detached scientific outlook, women have become all that is left beautiful, moral, decent, and pure in the world.

Until the Red Pill came along. Red Pill men suffer from the nihilistic notion that nothing can be beautiful in this life. It’s always a trick or evolutionary adaptation just waiting to strike. Therefrom springs Red Pill nihilism (Black Pill). The notion that nothing is right in the world; that the world is devoid of good women and therefore lacks good entirely. More importantly, that nothing can be done about it. It is a reverse sublimation of man’s nobler passions and the manifestation of calculating, brutal violence or hopeless despondency based on possible solutions.

To overcome this nihilism, all one has to do is abandon scientism.”

I agree that scientism corellates with Nihilism, but rejecting scientism is not enough to overcome Nihilism, because Nihilism is the absence of Meaning, by definition. 

Without the Beauty, Truth, and Goodness of a Mythos, Meaning and Purpose will continue to stagnate, and there will be no motivation for men to build a nuclear domain, and men’s eroding domains will continue to weaken and fragment Western society.

Thus, to overcome nihilism, we must reestablish an overarching Mythos that inspires the faith of constituent communities.  We must be able to find Meaning in the Mythos.

Going further, to overcome hopelessness and develop meaningfulness, we must revive the central place of a mythos that combines history, religion, and philosophy with science, as Michael Polanyi described.  Without a mythos that is widely held, truthful, and valid, the PTB, MGM, social media, Thinkspot and other similar media platforms can ONLY offer a Frustrated Catharsis, because nothing else is truly meaningful within nihilism.

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