That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute ‘reality.’ In order to make your beliefs ‘reality,’ you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific ‘experts,’ academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine. There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one ‘reality’ and replacing it with another is a brutal business.
Reality isn’t what it used to be. It never really was, but that’s another story. This one isn’t about reality per se. It’s about the War on Reality, the one we’re in the middle of, the war that started when the War on Terror was cancelled in the Summer of 2016. It’s actually an extension and an evolution of the War on Terror, and the War on Populism, and the rollout of the New Normal in 2020 … but that is also another story. I want to focus on the war that is raging currently, on the Internet, in people’s workplaces, homes, among friends and families, and in people’s heads. I’m pretty sure you know the war I’m talking about, regardless of which “side” you feel you are on.
The War on Reality is a civil war, but it is much more than just a civil war. It is an asymmetrical, polymorphous, metastatic, multiplicitous war. An ontological free-for-all. It has no conventions or rules of engagement. There are no battle lines. The battle is everywhere. Alliances shift from day to day. It is chaos, unrelenting, inescapable chaos. An omnipresent, immaterial, omnipotent organism attacking itself. It is continual, and completely unwinnable. It is unwinnable because it has already been won. It ended in victory the moment it began, and now we’re doomed to go on fighting it forever, or until some less ethereal leviathan is born, or reborn, out of its ashes.
Unfortunately, that’s rather likely, the less ethereal leviathan scenario. It may not come about in my lifetime — and, selfishly, I’m hoping it doesn’t — but this state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely. As I wrote in an essay in June of 2021 …
Another point of difference distinguishes free market aspirations from ideology. The myth of the free market is not utopian. It does not suggest the possibility of a perfect world but rather acknowledges scarcity as a starting point and always existing condition. Socialism, on the other hand, imagines endless bounty and suggests that the only barrier to achieving it is the capitalist order. Marxism is likewise religious and utopian in character.
I’ll begin with a provocative thesis: socialism is ideological and free market thinking, while involving myth, is nonideological. I will show why socialism is ideological and why free market thinking involves myth but is nonideological by defining the terms myth and ideology and distinguishing them from each other.
The term “myth” has several connotations. The most common connotation today is that myth represents false belief. Thus, we see many uses of the term myth in which some myth or other is figured as something to be debunked. We can point to hundreds of titles in which the word myth signifies a belief that is mistaken and which the article or book aims to overthrow with evidence and reasoning. When entering “the myth of” into the search field on Amazon.com, for example, titles beginning with phrase are suggested, including The Myth of Normal, by Gabor Mate; The Myth of American Inequality, by Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund et al.; The Myth of Closure, by Pauline Boss, and so on. Running the same search in an internet search engine yields similar results but includes articles on the myth of this or that, including a recent article by American Pravda (the New York Times), entitled “They Legitimized the Myth of a Stolen Election—and Reaped the Rewards,” referring to the Congresspersons who sought to block the supposedly legitimate results of the 2020 election.
But one will also find, in both searches, titles like The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus; The Myth of Eternal Return, by Mircea Eliade; The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic, by Douglas Frame; and others. Or in a search engine one finds discussions of various Greek myths in encyclopedias and on YouTube. Clearly, these latter uses of the term myth are different from the usage in the debunking books and articles. Myth in this other sense draws on a different meaning. The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus is not an argument against the myth itself. Rather, myth in this sense connotes a kind of tale that conveys a truth, an aspiration, or a means of making sense of experience. It is a structuring device for seeing order, patterns, possibilities, probable outcomes, and so on. Myth in this sense also includes lessons to be learned and kept in mind when crafting a life or life mission. The myth of Icarus is a tale about human hubris, for example. The story of the Garden of Eden is generally understood in such terms—as a myth about seeking to be like God. The sinking of the Titanic has been seen in terms of such Greek myths as Icarus and other tales of human hubris.
It is this latter sense of myth that I use here—of myth as a means by which we structure experience, find meaning, and craft the trajectories of our lives.
In time as faith and philosophy eroded away and institutions became more powerful than the god’s themselves, humanity invented ideology. The Utopian materialism of mechanised coercion, and far worse than theological religion, it is the belief that humanity can be steered, manipulated, and strangled into compliance; a compliance that will yield an imagined outcome dreamed up by the most arrogant, maniacal, and driven minds.
Whereas philosophy of the past came in many forms, it was for the individual to direct themselves and to contemplate their own actions and thoughts. To improve the world one deed at a time and by becoming a glowing example of a way, not just the way. It was the many understandings of self and community. The fertile potential for the solitary being, the many, the ruler, and even the tyrant.
Philosophy is that ancient gift that speaks to us despite the distance of time. The wisdom and perspective of those long dead carry words of weight and understanding that allows us to find a commonality with a past that is beyond imagination. It can allow us better reflection for now, and to grant us a perspective of scale.
The human condition is universal, unconstrained by place or time. It is a constant of all culture and race. The wise thoughts and timeless ponderings from those who lived and have been long dead are a testament that in time, we too shall be dead. Our lives can be as significant or as wasteful as we are allowed and allow ourselves. Philosophy in its many forms is the individual’s contemplation and explanation of self and the world outside. It is the many seeds for thought. What they may blossom into is unknown and as unique as the soil of the individual’s mind.
In time as faith and philosophy eroded away and institutions became more powerful than the god’s themselves, humanity invented ideology. The Utopian materialism of mechanised coercion, and far worse than theological religion, it is the belief that humanity can be steered, manipulated, and strangled into compliance; a compliance that will yield an imagined outcome dreamed up by the most arrogant, maniacal, and driven minds.
Whereas philosophy of the past came in many forms, it was for the individual to direct themselves and to contemplate their own actions and thoughts. To improve the world one deed at a time and by becoming a glowing example of a way, not just the way. It was the many understandings of self and community. The fertile potential for the solitary being, the many, the ruler, and even the tyrant.
It is in the absence of different voices, not just all but any other philosophy that many are unable to weigh up that which seems right to them, in a given time and place. The understanding that ones own self can go through many transformations. Our thoughts and circumstances will always change. Ones own philosophy may switch and mutate, evolve and at times disappear. And beyond the complexity of our own self lay the millions of others who inhabit this world and their own needs and considerations. Philosophy can be the wise appreciation of this. Ideology is the maniacal need to conform and command all under one, in the service of an imaginary common goal. That it turns out is not so common after all. That is why force is required.
Some times a coach, some times a fighter, some times a writer, often a reader but seldom a cabbage. Professional MMA fighter and coach. Unprofessional believer in liberty. I have studied, enlisted, worked in the meat industry for most of my life, all of that above jazz and to hopefully some day write something worth reading.
Finally, a belief in the Divine is necessary to avoid the omnipresent temptation of being drawn into utopian politics, which at its root, stems from a rejection of God. Support for utopian politics proceeds from disbelief in God, because there is only one true heaven. And, when people do not believe in and cannot aim for this true heaven, as a means of averting psychological anguish, they attempt to institute their own heaven on earth.
Russell Kirk, on page 474 of The Conservative Mind, defines conservatism as the “negation of ideology,” with there being “no simple set of formulas by which all the ills to which flesh is heir may be swept away.”
To delineate this concept, it is prudent to clarify what the “negation of ideology” does not entail. It does not deny there are superior ways of ordering society which can be procured from a careful analysis of history, prejudice and experience. As Kirk puts it, there exist “general principles of morals and of politics to which thinking men may turn.”
However, conservatism is the negation of ideology to the extent that it rejects ideology–be it communism, progressivism, white nationalism, or pro-vaccination fanaticism–as an enduring political solution or feasible cure to societal ills.
Why conservatives reject ideology
As to why conservatives rejects ideology, there are various good points in support. These include but are not limited to:
1. The impermanence of things:
On page 10 of the White Nationalist Manifesto, Greg Johnson notes that 99.9 % of all recorded animal species have gone extinct. Taking this statistic, Johnson warns:
Simply by virtue of existing, there is a 99.9 % chance that our (white) race will become extinct. If we want to be among the long-term survivors, we certainly can’t just depend upon luck (my emphasis).
There is a significant problem with this hope of being “long-term survivors,” a goal later used by Johnson to justify his vision for ‘whitopia’. Which is, no matter the action or precautionary measures taken, the white race–along with all other races, countries and cultures–will ultimately go extinct.
This is because, to paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas, everything which is contingent and comes into being must also go out of existence. If something can go out of existence and enough time is allowed for, it assuredly will go out of existence. There is no reason to believe that a contingent being can defy the fulfillment of its inherent potential for non-existence; as such, the European people cannot and will not persist forever.
To be clear, the preceding remarks are not to dismiss the importance of racial identity or even the novel achievements, inventions and ideas of men. It is to say, however, that as all things are transient, no political ideology or system can be a permanent solution to anything.
2. The limitations of temporal glory:
Ideologues tend to imagine that in the event of attaining their political objectives, they will acquire corresponding feelings of glory and happiness.
Irrespective of the specific ideology, the problem with this expectation is that temporal glory is always fleeting: no matter the greatness of the victory obtained, humans always return back to an ordinary, basal level of happiness.
In the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, E. Michael Jones refers to these inherent limitations on natural human happiness, as became apparent from the emotional hangovers of anti-Vietnam war activists:
By the time the revolutionary Jew got what he wanted it, he no longer wanted it. The Vietnam War was a classic case. In the spring of 1975, Radosh and his new wife attended a victory celebration for the Vietcong in Central Park, where they listened to Joan Baez, “the diva of the antiwar movement,” as well as “the artist who stood alongside the young Bob Dylan and epitomised the union of art and politics,” and Phil Ochs, as they sang Ochs’ anti-war anthem “I declare war is over.” A few months later, Ochs, an alcoholic wreck, committed suicide when Bob Dylan did not include him in the Rolling Thunder revue. Radosh and his wife experienced a milder form of letdown. Instead of a moment of triumph, “the end of the war,” Radosh says, “produced a great void.” It was “an occasion of deep melancholy” because the war and the draft had been “the issue that had given meaning to our lives” and now that issue was “beginning to evaporate,” and when Nixon abolished the draft, it evaporated.
3. Life is always the same:
Closely related to the above point, political circumstances, whether contributing to a moral as well as cohesive society, or an immoral and divided society–do not alter the fundamental nature of human life.
Life always follows the same essential pattern: there are happy times and sad times; there are triumphs and failures; we physically and intellectually blossom in youth, before being afflicted by old age, infirmities and ultimately, death.
For this reason, excessive stock should not be placed in ideology, or for that matter, political outcomes.
4. The true motives of ideologues:
It is well to be sceptical of ideologues, given what truly actuates their political advocacy. On page 382 of The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk captures their frequent underlying motivations, as exampled by a former marxist revolutionary from the late-19th century:
The boy who wrote Workers in the Dawn (1880), brimming with Ruskinian socialism, aspired to be “the mouthpiece of the advanced Radical party.” But social reform went the way of positivism, as Gissing came to maturity and saw the denizens of mean streets for what they were: four years later, Waymark in the The Unclassed dissects Gissing’s own youthful socialism, compounded of sentimentality and egotism. “I often amuse myself with taking to pieces my former self. I was not a conscious hypocrite in those days of violent radicalism, workingman’s-club lecturing, and the like; the fault was that I understood myself as yet so imperfectly. That zeal on behalf of the suffering masses was nothing more nor less than disguised zeal on behalf of my own starved passions. I was poor and desperate, life had no pleasures, the future seemed hopeless, yet I was overflowing with vehement desires, every nerve in me was a hunger which cried out to be appeased. I identified myself with the poor and ignorant; I did not make their cause my own, but my own cause theirs. I raved for freedom because I was myself in the bondage of unsatisfiable longing” (my emphasis).
When someone is in a state of sexual restlessness, they will commonly promote utopian politics. As such people are driven by an insatiable appetite and lack satisfaction at the individual level; at the collective level and in lieu of addressing their personal flaws, they often resort to ideology as a purported (and contrived) solution to social problems. In essence, ideologues seek to control others because they cannot control themselves.
Given this, support for ideology does not so much derive from or depend on its actual merits–again, be it communism, progressivism, white nationalism, or pro-vaccination fanaticism. Rather, the attraction to ideology more draws from the disordered psychological state of its adherents.
5. Our fallen nature:
Clearly, our fallen nature has many implications which are utterly inconsistent with the foundation and maintenance of utopias.
To give one such example, our fallen nature means that even when we understand what is right, we will in many cases choose to do evil–for reasons of convenience, selfishness, excitement, pleasure, etc. When we freely choose evil, this necessarily comes at the expense of others and the common good; an outcome which arises regardless of poverty, wealth inequality, political systems, and educational opportunities.
Because humans choose evil of their own volition, no political system can ever incubate itself against these decisions and their ramifications.
6. The human need for disruption and upheaval:
Strongly agitating against societies based on a peaceful (but purposeless) material prosperity, is the human impulse towards disruption and upheaval. Frequently, this impulse expresses itself against societies that have grown mundane and predictable, as martial values and transcendentalism cannot be indefinitely neglected. On page 79 of The True and only Heaven: Progress and its Critics, Christopher Lasch sets out how this impulse shored up popular support for the Third Reich:
In 1940, George Orwell made the same point about fascism. The Western democracies, he observed, had come to think that “human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain.” Whatever else could be said about it, fascism was “psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.” Hitler knew that men and women wanted more than “comfort, safety, short-working hours, hygiene, birth control.” “Whereas socialism, and even capitalism … have said to people, ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them, ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”
Religion, conservatism and the negation of ideology
In closing, there are many good arguments in favour of rejecting ideology, which contain persuasive value of themselves. Notwithstanding this, in practical terms, mere unaided reason is an insufficient justification for the conservative negation of ideology. This is because a belief in the Divine is also essential: conservatism cannot (beyond a few exceptions) be sustained in the absence of religious faith.
There are, in the main, three practical reasons forconservatism requiring this added sustenance of religious faith.
In the first place, if understood that we are directed towards a knowledge of and relationship with God–the Divine is our ultimate end–there is no potential for ideology to emerge and displace the primacy of faith.
In the second place, absent religious belief and an understanding of there being an eternal import to our actions, people are incapable of mustering the requisite moral discipline for maintaining a conservative society.
Finally, a belief in the Divine is necessary to avoid the omnipresent temptation of being drawn into utopian politics, which at its root, stems from a rejection of God. Support for utopian politics proceeds from disbelief in God, because there is only one true heaven. And, when people do not believe in and cannot aim for this true heaven, as a means of averting psychological anguish, they attempt to institute their own heaven on earth.
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