Principle Might Get You a King, Foolishness Will Get You Nowhere

Michael Annissimov was one of the writers I picked up via the 'Dark Enlightenment' media stunt. I was reading a bunch of the bloggers identified as such, but neither Nick Land nor Annissimov proved to be particularly enlightening since I learned about them. Indeed, when he talked to Noah Smith, I felt a wish that I could get a hold of Annissimov and put him through a boot camp of sorts. They talked about 'all men are created equal' for example, which is easily dealt with, for it is a biological reality that we are all born helpless and dependent on our parents. It is therefore simple enough to dismiss it as addressing what is clearly part of our common human condition, and obviously not the sort of thing our founding fathers- who were rather aristocratic in nature (they did found a Republic with wealthy landowners as the voters, not the rabble)-meant to deny the obvious inequality we find in the world. Annissimov didn't coherently deal with even something this simple, and it seemed Smith just pushed the conversation along as he saw fit.

Annissimov started quoting a lot of Julius Evola on his blog, so I checked out some of Evola's work. Evola turns out to have a somewhat decent handle on the state of the world in his time, but not on how to deal with it, for his first and rather fatal premise is 'to be yourself'. This is the beginning of his prescription for 'transcendance,' having decided, given the rather sad nature of Christians, that Christianity must have nothing to offer. Evola probably should have known better, given that those actually capable of transcendence were pretty much rooted out of Christendom during it's destruction. What Christ could have brought for Evola is a different starting point- perfection. If you begin with yourself you can be tricked, for there a quite a lot of things technically larger than yourself, to which you can 'transcend' only to find things that are not so good for you. The modern state is something 'bigger than yourself' and you can certainly tie yourself to it. There are also less than perfect beings who can waste your time or even damage you.

(I will very likely write something a bit more extensive about Evola and what he missed about Christianity.)

At some point it occured to me Annissimov reminded me of this transhumanist I eventually stopped reading. When I googled him, I found Accelerating Future, which appears to be the Annissimov's other blog that I gave up reading long ago. Why would a Christian read transhumanist stuff? Well, to the degree they are pursuing perfection, I generally like it. Unfortunately, they often support unconscionable shortcuts and set themselves up for the same scam the so-called transgendered already are subject to. I have no doubt surgeons will happily perform surgeries on transhumanists too, if they can figure out a way to provide a simalucrum of what transhumanists want.

But all that is prelude.

Annissimov is now attacking various components of this not really existent Dark Enlightment. He attacks the Manosphere, he attacks economics. He wants to debate the pro-immigration libertarians, who, at this point, could eat him for lunch. It is like he got mugged one night and then decided he needed someone to keep the street safe. For some reason he's landed on this principle of monarchy, but he seems to have only one.

But for the rest of us, we've been collecting principles. The principles found in Austrian Economics are principles that led me to realize a monarchist who understood such principles could rule well. Furthermore, I also understand the beneficial effects of a royal family acting, as it were, a biological target, assuming they could actually listen to Erasmus and not marry outside their own realm. This would create a people with a strong identity, and it would harness the currently unhinged feminine traits that happening to be contributing to the destruction of the modern world.

Now, it just so happens that a monarch who believes in Austrian Economics would not have much of an economic policy, especially not of the type and scope that Evola would protest against. There is very little benefit, in the Austrian view, to the growth promoting policies modern states have become addicted to, given that this results in misallocation of resources.

So too, does the Manosphere inform us of principles, but nobody is going around hugging the cads. If they write a good piece that touches on principle, they get kudos that, not for being cads. This is how I know about those unhinged feminine traits and how reintroducing a healthy form of hierarchy- for they currently sort of make it up as they go along, trending towards heavily muscled thugs with tattoos, since they seem to invent hierarchy out of thin air if there isn't one there- would help rebuild civilization.

The principles form the foundation for ANY change, not just the change Annissimov wants. Yet he seems to want to swing round his one idea like a club, and he knocks out all the other ones, whereupon I wonder why the hell I care. I was a libertarian, a private property anarchist first. I can see a logical progression, to a natural aristocracy, and to a monarch. I can see how careful arrangement of incentives leads to all that Annissimov wants and more, but I can't see how Annissimov himself leads to it. He might as well advocate for a super hero, for it is only through superpowers that his king could keep his office. Mortal rulers need to be accepted by the ruled.

Whatever. My time is probably better spent planting a garden. This is the other idea that keeps creeping up on me. Maybe we just have to walk away, find some easily defendable land, grow food, possibly build enough of a society where we can see something decent bloom. Whether that's a small hope or a big depression depends on the day.