The Tyranny of the Technical Society

When we think of writers who are popular reads within neoreactionary circles, Jacques Ellul is not one who readily comes to mind (likely because he was writing in the 1950s, rather than the 1750s or 1850s).  Ellul, for those who are not familiar with him, was a French sociologist and philosopher who began as a Marxist but converted to Catholicism around 1930.  However, he was not ever really a traditional Catholic – much of his theology relating to so-called “Christian anarchism” (which centered upon his absolute rejection of violence, whether religious or secular) eventually led him to formulate positions which while holding to a high view of the biblical texts, tended to reject a role for secular government in the lives of Christians who were living by the Scriptures, which made him more popular with pietistic Protestant groups than with his own church.

However, this is not to say that there aren’t “NRx friendly” areas of overlaps between Ellul’s thought and that of neoreactionaries today.  For instance, his distrust of unrestrained capitalism is reminiscent of reactionary criticisms of capitalism as both vulgar and detrimental to a well-ordered society.  Likewise, Ellul was not altogether friendly to democracy and seemed to see democratic government as a bit of a farce – though given his experiences during World War II, he can perhaps be forgiven for not embracing more authoritarian forms.  Ellul was also concerned with the corrosive and detrimental effects which modernism – especially economic modernism – had on traditional societies.  So while he certainly was not a reactionary by any means, Ellul had some areas of commonality which should prevent him from being automatically stricken from any reading lists.

The book which I would like to discuss/springboard from is his 1954 work, The Technological Society.  In this book, he catalogs – in great detail – the effects which technique has upon various areas of life.  In the process, he more or less reports (and, in the process predicts) the ills of life in the modern world, from the fears of being replaced by automation to the increasing reverence for sportsball over religion and tradition, and much else.

I Disavow SBC17

One of the unfortunate truths of the modern West is that 90% of everything has been subverted by cultural marxism, including practically every major religious organisation.  This has long been obvious in overtly liberal denominations such as those within the World Council of Churches (WCC).  Sadly, this has become more and more apparent even in so-called “conservative” denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which despite its reputation for conservatism, has (at least at a leadership level) been a hotbed of cultural marxism for over two decades.  This is made all the more apparent by this proposed resolution to be submitted at the Southern Baptist Convention’s 2017 annual meeting (SBC17) and which will almost assuredly be passed by the assembled delegates out of some misguided sense of “justice.”  The resolution calls on the SBC to condemn the alt-Right and nationalism in general, vomiting out the same laundry list of mean, scary “isms” that you’d find in any crudely drafted anarchist Antifa manifesto somewhere in the lower rent districts of the internet.

Full disclosure: I am a Baptist, but I am not a Southern Baptist.  Instead, I am an Independent, Fundamental Baptist.  So – in theory – I shouldn’t have standing to complain about this.  However, many of the associations I am involved in contain religiously diverse memberships – Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, pagans, agnostics, and more – who do not generally tend to see the finer distinctions between various types of Baptists.  As a result, when the Southern Baptist Convention acts on a set of godless, globalist impulses such as are represented in the resolution in question, it tends to tar other Baptists with its unbiblical and satanic brush.

I will make a detailed presentation of the biblical case for nationalism below – though I shouldn’t need to  since it’s one that most Christians of every denomination understood during the previous nineteen and a half centuries of the existence of Christ’s churches.  Christianity contains within its doctrines a “weak universalistic” message pertaining to the universality of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for sinful man and for the capacity for human beings of all races and nations to place their faith and trust in God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ unto salvation.  However, it is an unbiblical and illogical leap to pass from that to the sort of “strong universalistic” globalist, socially and nationally equalitarian message which modern liberalism implicitly assumes.  In other words, while it is a genuinely Christian message to say that Christ’s blood can be applied to any sinner of any group, it is NOT a genuinely Christian message to take that basic truth and twist it to claim that it means that national borders should be erased, that racial and national distinctions should be disregarded, and so forth.  The latter is not at all implied by the former.  Yet, this is the message which is adopted by even so-called conservatives when they criticise nationalism as they seek to ingratiate themselves with a godless world that increases more and more in its rebellion against every standard and ordinance of God which He has established for the governance of this world.  This is what SBC17 would be doing if it adopted this resolution.

Three Types of Societies, Three Types of Governments

[Update: Quincy Latham at Quas Lacrimas has a superb reaction/expansion responding to this post.  Go over there and read the whole thing!]

One of the most widely fought arguments within broad alt-Right circles is the question of “race versus culture.”  On one side, there are those who argue for a more or less completely deterministic view, essentially saying that the level and type of civilisation which a people possess are solely determined by their race and their genetics.  For them, the culture which a group of people possesses has been “hard-wired” into them due to the directions which their genetic lineage took millennia ago.  On the other hand, there are those who would argue that culture, civilisation, etc. of any kind could be created and sustained by literally anybody.  These are the folks who seriously believe that you can replace the white populations of Europe, North America, and Australia with brown and black third-worlders and still maintain the same level of civilisation, liberties, etc. as were created by whites. The former position is the one typical for white nationalists, while the latter is usually the domain of so-called “civic nationalists.”

As an ethnonationalist, I tend to agree with neither of these positions.  Rather, I see a mutually reinforcing feedback loop existing among language, culture, and genetic lineage which serves as recursive reinforcement for all three of these things.  The mechanism by which this loop operates is the process of ethnogenesis, in which new ethnoi are gradually produced through evolutionary processes, mostly involving the splitting off of new groups from parent stocks, though sometimes involving the amalgamation of portions of two or more ethnic groups together to form a new group (e.g. what happened in much of Latin America where lower class whites mixed with indios to produce the region’s many variegated mestizo cultural groups).  Per the biblical model, the confounding of languages led to the parting of ways of several very early people-groups who then developed their own cultures, the forms of which depended upon both genetic (intelligence, physical attributes, etc.) and environmental factors.  Over the millennia, these groups continued to break apart as they spread out and colonised new areas (or conquered already claimed regions), with new languages developing, and new cultural forms, traditions, and mores evolving.  As such, the issue is not nearly as clear-cut as the “race vs. culture” paradigm would suggest.  Race and culture work together, along with language evolution, and reinforce each other.  However, it is also fair to note that within a cultural group, the members will virtually always share the same race, and conversely that within the main racial groups into which mankind is divided, those of the same race will exhibit cultures (and languages, though this is less definitive) which are more similar to each other than they are to those in other racial groupings.

Having said all of this, I would then note that among the many other things which are influenced by both genes and surroundings are the broad types of governmental forms (specifically, the three “classical” types of monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic) which tend to be “inhering” traits of the peoples who exhibit them.  Several months ago, I touched on this in a post which could be thought of as a “case study,” in this case the specific question of why medieval and renaissance republicanism seems to have been limited to high-IQ Germanic populations.  Why do cultures – and I’m going to bring the focus specifically to European, European-derived, and near-kin Indo-European populations – exhibit preferences for one type over the others?  Are there cultural reasons which may predispose a nation in a certain governmental direction?

The “New Man” and the Renovation of Aristocracy

One of the greatest flaws in modern democratic and republican societies is the lack of a true and genuine aristocracy.  While aristocracy has been much maligned since the rise of the revolutionary spirit engendered by the Enlightenment (and exemplified in the American and French revolutions), historically the rule of the best has been one of the anchors of stable and successful civil and moral society. The replacement of aristocracy by popular, democratically-oriented regimes is one of the long-term causes of the inverted and dissociative trends which have become the norm in nearly all Western cultures.

One the most basic things that anyone who hopes to have a rational view of human civilisation must understand is that hierarchy is the natural state of affairs within human society.  In practice, there is no human society which has not had some form of social hierarchy, however “primitive.”  Even though many ancient societies were not organised into the rigid and distinct castes into which many traditional Indo-European groups were, either in tripartite (priest-warrior-commoner) or quadripartite (brahman-kshatriya-vaishya-sudra) form, virtually every society which humanity has ever produced within the past 6-10,000 years has had some form of hierarchy.  Even systems (such as communism) which seek in theory to destroy hierarchy end up in practice simply reinstituting a new system of hierarchy to replace the old.

Since hierarchy is natural in human society, the obvious corollary is that aristocracy is also natural and right (when genuinely aristocratic men occupy the apex of their nations).  There must and will always be a class within any society which makes up the “top men.”  This is true even within liberal and democratic regimes, though the bases for the elevation of the leaders in such societies generally are not truly “aristocratic,” but are based on retrograde and degenerate reasons such as mere wealth, technocratic skill, or political subterfuge.  In more Traditional and well-ordered societies, the leadership caste is made up of warriors and regality, those who inherently possess superior traits through blood and spirit, and who subsequently apply themselves toward developing those traits through religion, service to the king and nation, and the perfection of their minds.

Cicero’s “On Old Age” and Modernity’s Obsession with Newness

I don’t believe that it will come as a surprise to most readers that Western Civilization is obsessed with the idea of being “modern,” and has been for quite a while. Concomitant with this concept is that of “newness.” If something is new, then this is equated with it being better. Conversely, things which are old are viewed as out-of-date or even useless.  This mentality has wormed its way into practically every facet of life in the West. Indeed many of our industries operate on the principle of planned obsolescence – purposefully engineering their products to be superseded buy newer models on a regular basis.

Coupled with this tendency is the one similar to it that fetishizes youth while disdaining old age. Our shallow societies equate youth with beauty, and give preference to those in our societies who have the least knowledge and wisdom. Youthful foolishness is honored over staid, grumpy old wisdom. Westerners spend billions of dollars every year on surgeries and pharmaceuticals, vainly trying to stave off the inevitable effects of both entropy and their degenerate lifestyles.  Nearly the entirety of our entertainment, advertising, and related establishments are focused on catering to the young – when is the last time you saw an older person hawking the latest electronic gadget or starring in the hottest new sitcom?

In his essay “On Old Age,” Cicero lauds the blessing of the aged, giving four reasons why men fear growing old and then refuting those reasons.

On Ethnonationalism and Aristocladism

Here at the Times, I have previously discussed ethnonationalism and even applied it to the American situation.  Essentially, ethnonationalism posits that nations – defined as people sharing common culture, heritage, traditions, language, religion, mores, and so forth (and thus, by extension, nearly always sharing a common genetic descent as well) – should be free to self-associate rather than being forced into supranational or globalistic schemas which dilute and destroy their unique national inheritances.  But let’s say that this sort of schema were actually to become a reality to a much greater degree than it currently is – what would such a world look like?  Would the world be divided among tens of thousands of different nations – each with its own well-defined territorial expanse – consisting of anywhere from tens of millions of people down to merely a few thousand?  I don’t necessarily see how that would be advantageous, and would indeed be a very chaotic sort of situation – exactly the opposite of the type of orderly system that traditionalists and reactionaries seek to restore.

Instead, I believe that an ethnonationalist world order should include the element of aristocladism.  Essentially, aristocladism may be defined as the division of national groups into hierarchies based on a variety of metrics having to do with their relative power and capacities, including many intangibles such as national spirit, courage, and so forth.  Some nations, even when compared to their close relatives and neighbours, seem to “have it together” more than the others.  It’s only natural that these nations should stand out as natural leaders and protectors for those around them.  However, before expanding on this idea, I’d like to discuss a few foundational concepts.

Why Tribalism Happens and What It Could Mean for the Future

[Ed. Note: Quas Lacrimas has posted an excellent essay about tribalism as well which dovetails quite nicely with this post.  Please take a moment to read it!]

In this post, I’d like to address the phenomenon of tribalism.  There can be two general definitions of this term.  The first is attitudinal – it refers to the possession by a group of people of a strong ethnic and cultural identity, one which pervades every level and facet of their society, and which serves to separate (often in a hostile sense) the group’s understanding of itself apart from its neighbours.  The second definition is more technical and anthropological, referring to a group of people organised along kinship lines and possessing what would generally be referred to as a “primitive” governmental form centered around a chieftain and body of elders who are often thought to be imbued with supernatural authority and prestige (mana or some similar concept).  The first definition, of course, is nearly always displayed by the second.  It is this second definition which I would like to deal with, however.

Specifically, I’d like to explore the question of how tribalism relates to the collapse of widely spread cultures when they are placed under extreme stresses.

There is always the temptation to view historical and pre-historical (i.e., before written records were available) people-groups which were organised along tribal lines as “primitives” or even “stupid.”  This is not necessarily the case, and in many instances is certainly not true.  However, tribalism is not a truly optimal or even “natural” form of social organisation, and I believe is forced onto people-groups more out of necessity than anything else.

On American Ethnonationalism

When the question of ethnonationalism comes up, many are often tempted to say that the United States cannot have a “genuine” type of it because of the somewhat “artificial” nature of the USA, planted as colonies and then filled with immigrants which were (originally) from NW Europe, then the rest of Europe, prior to 1965.  The Germans could have German nationalism, the Italians could have Italian nationalism, and so forth, but Americans can’t have a genuine ethnonationalism of their own.  I believe this argument rests on the false premise that race – and only race – determines nationality, which is incorrect.  This argument misses the true meaning of what the term ethnos means.  Ethnos is a word which was found in nearly all dialects of Greek (Attic, Doric, Koine, etc.) and which originally denoted a body or company of people living together.  The term developed the connotative meaning of those who live together and share the same culture, laws, language, etc. In other words, ethnos is primarily a culture term, not a racial one – though certainly we should understand that those who share the same culture will nearly always share the same racial and genetic attributes as well – but this is not the primary meaning of the term.

Hence, genuine “ethnonationalism” isn’t built around a genetic framework, but one of shared culture, mores, religion, language, etc, and obviously involves something much deeper than the superficial “propositional nation” nonsense bandied about by civic nationalists.  Indeed, ethnonationalism is the biblical and moral form of nationalism, the one which is most in line with natural law and the long precedent of human historical practice.  Frenchmen can have French nationalism because of their shared culture and language – foreign Algerians and Tunisians with their alien mores, religion, and language will never be “Frenchmen” in the true sense of the word.  Now, as this applies to the USA – certainly, the people of the USA share culture, language, etc.  It is quite legitimate to speak of an “American” ethnic group, which is distinct from other white, European-derived groups, even from other Anglo groups like the English, Canadians, and Australians (members of our cultural and genetic clade).

Reactionary Ideas in Speculative Fiction

Typically, one would not tend to associate speculative fiction with reactionary ideas.  Speculative fiction – which I am using as a term to include both science fiction and alternate history – tends toward modernism in both its applications and in its underlying ideologies. Even in the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction, this genre of literature was dominated by both progressives and libertarians. The more recent speculative fiction tends to be explicitly and almost uniformly progressive, except for a few writers who consciously seek to buck the trend.

Yet, good speculative fiction contains within it enough realism so that the fantastical elements within the story will still seem plausible.  As such, while exploring futuristic technologies or unfamiliar social systems, a good story will seek to weave in realistic elements that align the story with underlying scientific, social, and psychological realities that are true in every era.  This is why fiction written by authors like Larry Correia or Jerry Pournelle features strong stories that capture the reader’s attention, while fiction written by incorrigibly progressive authors like Octavia Butler or N.K. Jemison generally ranks as literary drivel and only finds an audience among those who consciously seek it out because it reinforces their progressive ideological prejudices.  Since reaction – which is essentially a revolt against the unreality of so much of modern society – is eminently a reality-based thought system, it is only natural that reactionary ideas will crop up time to time even in fiction written by modernistic and scientistic authors.

Below, I’d like to sketch six books or franchises within this genre in which reaction-friendly ideas form a significant part of their plots. In some of these works, the inclusion may be intentional while in others it is merely incidental. I will trust that the reader is either familiar with these works or else may become familiar with them easily enough.  Thus I will provide only a bare outline of the plots of the works being discussed and will assume some level of tacit knowledge about them on the part of the reader.

Some Thoughts on Immigration, Segregation, and Gentrification

Recently, I wrote a couple of articles about the social alloying model for immigration and the dangers of the decline of the average American IQ whose concepts are more than tangentially related.  Skepticism about immigration, especially mass immigration, has finally been mainstreamed in the United States, and is headed in that direction in most of the rest of the Western world.  The so-called “refugee” crisis is coming to head as Europe and the Anglosphere are being flooded by millions of hostile, inassimilable, socially corrosive aliens from across the uncivilised world.  This is quickly driving those in the middle into one of two directions as the West swiftly divides into two starkly opposite camps – those who wish to preserve the Western world and its unique, valuable set of cultures by ending this immigration, and those who wish to continue the flood of savages unabated until the West succumbs under the tidal wave of barbarism and brutishness.

It is rightly remarked that such a flood of “immigrants” isn’t really correctly described by the word “immigration.”  Rather, the term “invasion” would be more a propos.  This, of course, fits right in with the social alloying model referenced above.  In the production of alloys, when one metal is of dissimilar atomic size and electronegativity to the base metal, only small amounts of that metal can be successfully incorporated into the base metal to form an alloy.  Likewise, when “immigrants” are of grossly different culture, race, language, etc., only small numbers of them can be incorporated into a host society.  When you flood a million Muslim barbarians into a civilised Western nation like Germany or Sweden, the results – as we can plainly see – are going to be catastrophic.  Already, the societies of every European country that has taken in a large proportion of Muslim and African “refugees” have found themselves weakened and even seemingly ready to collapse.

The wisdom of nationalism is quite obvious from these examples before us.  Different countries exist so that people of different cultures can live with their own kinds, within their own cultures, where everyone generally shares the same assumptions, mores, and ways of living.  As much as multiculturalists may wish it to be so, trying to force large groups of people from different cultures and races to live together will not result in some glowing multicultural utopia, but rather war and bloodshed.  “Diversity + proximity = war” should be a truism that every right-thinking person understands and internalises.