A Follow-Up To My Letter To Academia

Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web; touch it, that it tremble!

This is my very long farewell message to academia and the university system more generally, though I will go into many other topics besides those.

The first part of this is meant for the department of psychology at the University of New Mexico, and perhaps especially the individuals who I called out personally.

Really, it’s for anyone who likes to punish people who deviate from the dogmas of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, “social justice”, “feminism”, “multiculturalism”, or any of the other stupid ideologies which have infected academia.

To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful. But I shall bring your secrets to light.

Here’s what I said about it in my YouTube series, which I made earlier this Summer.

I wonder what the response will be to my departure from academia, if there will be any response at all. I wonder, especially, what the more devout adherents of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the department of psychology at the University of New Mexico will do. My suspicion is that some of them won’t be happy with me.

I suspect that, even though I am leaving, some of them will want to make sure I am punished. For example, I suspect that Nicole Reyna would want me to be punished in some way for calling her a cunt. I suspect some other people might feel similarly.

I stand by everything I’ve said.

My suspicion is that they will want revenge. I suspect that they will want to call their revenge “justice”. Am I wrong?

Behold, this is the hole of the tarantula. Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web; touch it, that it tremble!

There it comes willingly: welcome, tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sits black on your back; and I also know what sits in your soul. Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

I could be wrong. I hope I’m right though.

Nothing would be more hilarious than for them to publicly complain about me. Every time they speak my name they are doing me a favor.

I’m in a weird employment situation. I don’t want a regular job and I can’t stay in academia. I need to make money however I can. For the moment, I’m trying to get some more paid subscribers on my Patreon and substack (only $5 a month).

My content is all free, so the main perk for paying is that you get Q&As if you want.

I wonder if you remember this:

These same types of people complained very loudly about Jordan Peterson and it made him the most influential public intellectual in the world and a multi-millionaire.

I don’t expect to become famous or a multi-millionaire in the near future.

But wouldn’t it be funny if, in their complaints against me, they helped me to achieve even a little more fame and a little more wealth? I suspect that would be the outcome.

Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Thus I speak to you in a parable—you who make souls whirl, you preachers of equality. To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful. But I shall bring your secrets to light; therefore I laugh in your faces with my laughter of the heights. Therefore I tear at your webs, that your rage may lure you out of your lie-holes and your revenge may leap out from behind your word “justice”. For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

You’re doing me a favor every time you speak my name.

Up yours woke moralists. We’ll see who cancels who.

What do they really hate?

As best I can tell, what they really hate is masculinity, since they are themselves, each one of them, effeminate little pussies. They hate anyone who has this attitude, which is my attitude:

They are only brave in a group. Independence is a foreign concept to these sick, hopelessly weak individuals. Nietzsche understood the type:

Where does one not encounter that veiled glance which burdens one with a profound sadness, that inward-turned glance of the born failure which betrays how such a man speaks to himself—that glance which is a sigh! “If only I were someone else,” sighs this glance: “but there is no hope of that. I am who I am: how could I ever get free of myself? And yet—I am sick of myself!”

It is on such soil, on swampy ground, that every weed, every poisonous plant grows, always so small, so hidden, so false, so saccharine. Here the worms of vengefulness and rancor swarm; here the air stinks of secrets and concealment; here the web of the most malicious of all conspiracies is being spun constantly—the conspiracy of the suffering against the well-constituted and victorious, here the aspect of the victorious is hated. And what [falseness] is employed to disguise that this hatred is hatred! What a display of grand words and postures, what an art of “honest” [lies]! These failures: what noble eloquence flows from their lips! How much sugary, slimy, humble submissiveness swims in their eyes! What do they really want? At least to represent justice, love, wisdom, superiority—that is the ambition of the “lowest,” the sick. And how skillful such an ambition makes them! Admire above all the forger’s skill with which the stamp of virtue, even the ring, the golden-sounding ring of virtue, is here counterfeited…

They walk among us as embodied reproaches, as warnings to us—as if health, well-constitutedness, strength, pride, and the sense of power were in themselves necessarily vicious things for which one must pay some day, and pay bitterly: how ready they themselves are at bottom to make one pay; how they crave to be hangmen. There is among them an abundance of the vengeful disguised as judges, who constantly bear the word “justice” in their mouths like poisonous spittle, always with pursed lips, always ready to spit upon all who are not discontented but go their way in good spirits…

The sick woman especially: no one can excel her in the wiles to dominate, oppress, and tyrannize. The sick woman spares nothing, living or dead; she will dig up the most deeply buried things (the Bogos say: “woman is a hyena”).

-Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals III. 14

That’s what I see.

I see sick, hopelessly weak men and women who have used the little bit of intellect they have to find some devious path to tyranny over the strong and well-constituted. They call their tyranny “social justice” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “multiculturalism” or whatever. Anybody who disagrees with their stupid ideas must be someone who is capable of thinking independently. Anybody who is capable of independent thought must be punished as severely as possible.

At least, that’s how they act.

I suspect that I am almost perfectly designed to piss them off. Why?

I am a straight white man from a working class background. My mom was a schoolteacher and my father was a pizza delivery driver (though I am, as I recently learned, most likely a bastard). My childhood was fine, I guess, and I’m not complaining about it. But the fact is that I probably grew up in worse conditions than most of them, so if they want to accuse me of “privilege”, they can suck my dick.

I’m from the south and I like my heritage (though I despise the history of actual racism in the south). Calling me racist, sexist, transphobic, or whatever (not that I am actually any of those things) has precisely zero effect on me.

I don’t need their approval. I have no need to play their status games. The job market in academia at the moment is garbage anyways. I don’t want to beg for scraps from arrogant mid-wits.

I’m a poor hillbilly from a flyover state. I come from nothing.

And I’m smarter than them. If I wanted to, I could beat them at their own game. And they know it. Or, at least, they ought to know it.

I just think their game is dumb and I don’t want to play it.

I think that those who most vehemently promote their silly ideology are typically whiny, spineless, pathetic man-children. I think the women who most vehemently promote their ideology are typically duplicitous sluts.

They constantly bear the word “justice” in their mouth like poisonous spittle.

The more they speak my name, the more I win.

I have made some very interesting claims on my substack recently. Among them was the claim that I have prophets.

That’s not a joke. I mean that in the most direct and literal sense possible. I mean that some individuals are literally prophets who have heralded my existence. The most obvious of these prophets is Friedrich Nietzsche, my greatest philosophical influence.

The other prophets I want to discuss in this post are Kid Cudi, B.o.B., and Jordan Peterson.

I have claimed that the music of these two artists, B.o.B. and Kid Cudi, is “synchronous” with my experience in that, for the most part, their music is simply communicating how it sounds in my mind (give or take some minor details).

My relatively stable, rational, serious side sounds a lot like B.o.B.

My idiosyncratic, melancholy, unstable, emotional side sounds a lot like Kid Cudi.

Both of them have always had my back.

Jordan Peterson saved my life.

In his first book Maps of Meaning, he wrote about the experiences that characterize what he called “the revolutionary hero”. Those experiences almost perfectly line up with my own experience.

In his 2006 paper “Peacemaking Among Higher Order Primates”, Jordan Peterson said:

The local victor is replaceable, but the peacemaker is not. The local victor is a machine – a very efficient machine, to be sure, but still a machine. The peacemaker is neither a factory product, nor a machine. In consequence, he must be he who cannot be replaced. This means that the peacemaker, hard and protean, must also be idiosyncratic, as well as universal. There is nothing more common than the unique, but there is also nothing more difficult to attain. It is the uniqueness of the peacemaker that makes him able to listen. If he is a local victor, then he is an avatar of the enemy, in precise proportion to his local victory. If he is a local loser, then he is an avatar of the enemy, in proportion to his loss. If he is unique, however, then he is an enemy to his local environment, whether he is being regarded by the victor or the loser. Being the other, the enemy, he can listen to the other, then enemy. Listening, he can make peace. (pp. 6-7)

The fifth prophet is the band AC/DC, who also speaks for me and whose music I will refer to throughout this article.

The claim that the music of Kid Cudi, B.o.B., and AC/DC (among others) is speaking for me is obviously insane, from the conventional perspective.

But what do I care about that?

This is how it sounds in my mind:

Well, ask me a question, I’ll tell you no lies.
Cause there's nothing to hide, my souls in my eyes.
And I'm ahead of my time but I cannot rewind.
The only thing I fear is the mirror in my bathroom.
People look and try to see a disguise,
But there is nothing that nobody can't see in light.
If its a song with a rhyme or a verse with a line,
then you understand my mind.

True.

People look and try to see a disguise, but there is nothing that nobody can’t see in light. If it’s a song with a rhyme or a verse with a line, then you understand my mind.

True.

This is going to be a pretty long article. Before I get started, I also want to mention John Vervaeke, who I think is very different from me temperamentally (which is probably a good thing), and who makes use of a very different intellectual background than I do. Philosophically, he is more influenced by Plato and Socrates, for example, while I am more influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche and William Blake.

I made extensive use of John’s work in my YouTube series, especially here:

Regardless (and most likely because) of our differences, his work has been extremely useful to me. Whatever our differences, I think we have the same goal in mind.

---

The “social justice warriors” within academia do not actually care about justice. They just want revenge against anyone who isn’t quite as mediocre and cowardly as they are.

If you are somebody who actually cares about justice, you and I aren’t enemies, whether you know it or not. Many so-called “social justice warriors” just want to feel good about themselves (and look good to others) by adopting a veneer of unearned virtue.

I would like to have some peace with these “preachers of equality”, but the truth is that I have no use for them, not even as enemies. Their best course of action would be to ignore me, though I doubt they’ll be able to.

I take Nietzsche’s advice, to:

Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock. The hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces.

Mistrust all who speak much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had — power.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

Unlike them, I care about actual justice, although I rarely use that word.

This how it sounds in my mind:

I am here with a single-minded aim, which for the moment takes the form of inciting open rebellion against the government of the United States of America.

That’s not a joke.

This is how it sounds in my mind:

And I’m not here to herd cattle, so I expect this to fall on deaf ears for the most part.

“To lure many away from the herd, for that I have come. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: Zarathustra wants to be called a robber by the shepherds.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

To lure many away from the herd, for that I have come. I am looking for those who are a little bit like me. I am looking for those who are honest and independent.

I am looking for those who are ready and willing to go to war with the Old God.

And who is the Old God?

As Nietzsche understood all too well, that Old God is called “Thou Shalt” and for the moment that Old God takes the form of the State.

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not where we live, my brothers: here there are states. State? What is that? Well then, open your ears to me, for now I shall speak to you about the death of peoples.

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells lies too; and this lie crawls out of its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.” That is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

And why? Because the state as it currently exists is corrupt beyond redemption, as some of us know all too well.

And there can be no peace while that corruption exists, and so it has to be dealt with first. And that makes me, for the moment, something of a:

Who was the God of War?

Mars, AKA Jehovah.

I make war to secure peace. From the Wikipedia article on Mars:

Unlike Ares, who was viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force, Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace, and was a father (pater) of the Roman people.

I am militant. That’s not a metaphor. I am here to wage war against the Old God.

Replace the word “Cleveland” with my own hometown, and this is how it sounds in my mind.

Don’t be afraid at all y’all. All I ask of all y’all is to please:

Embrace the Martian.

I am the “Ghost of Sparta”, who kneels to nobody, not even a living god, not even in the face of certain defeat, and not even when offered power and riches and everything he could imagine.

That’s me.

And this is how it sounds in my mind.

True story.

That is how it sounds in my mind in relation to the United States Government. It is how it sounds in my mind in relation to religious zealots of all stripes. It is how it sounds in my mind in relation to the psychiatric industry. It is how it sounds in my mind in relation to my parents. It is how it sounds in my mind in relation to anyone and everyone who wants to tell me how to live my life.

Never again will anybody rule over me, for any reason.

I am anomalous.

The revolutionary hero reorders the protective structure of society, when the emergence of an anomaly makes such reordering necessary. He is therefore the agent of change, upon whose actions all stability is predicated. This capacity — which should make him a welcome figure in every community — is exceedingly threatening to those completely encapsulated by the status quo, and who are unable or unwilling to see where the present state of adaptation is incomplete and where residual danger lies. The archetypal revolutionary hero therefore faces the anger and rejection of his peers, as well as the terrors of the absolutely unknown. He is nonetheless the "best friend" of the state. (Maps of Meaning, p. 271)

True.

And if I wouldn’t kneel to a living god, I certainly won’t kneel to these little bitch ass losers who occupy academia.

Properly understood, every shaman is also a warrior, and a rebel, and a heretic, and a madman. And like every shaman before me, I’m here to do some magic.

You see, my experience in the world has been so strange that it is difficult for me to determine whether it’s even real. What even is reality?

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think I have hallucinated. I haven’t, to the best of my knowledge. I am also not concerned about my ability to think rationally. I am fully capable of rational thought. The problem is that my rational train of thought leads me to ideas that are so unbelievable that they make me question the very nature of reality.

Whatever. I know my own mind and I know that I am committed to the truth, strange as it may be. That is my faith.

But as for the cowards and unbelieving and abominable [who are devoid of character and personal integrity and practice or tolerate immorality], and murderers, and sorcerers [with intoxicating drugs], and idolaters and occultists [who practice and teach false religions], and all the liars [who knowingly deceive and twist truth], their part will be in the lake that blazes with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

Revelation 21

I can’t decide, what if life’s a lie?

I push the lames aside, they’ll learn.

I can’t ever front, know why? It’s not my style, no lie.

Fuck all the talk. In time, they’ll burn.

True.

Shittin on these niggas, that is my fave.
Can’t mess with an unstoppable force,
that lives with no regrets and of course no remorse.
1, 2, 1, 2 assholes, now please listen close.
I live for the day to watch all you pussies roast.

Bitch, you know I’m:

True.

Why, in my previous post, did I go after three issues in particular?

Those were:

1) race differences in intelligence,

2) sex differences in interest and abilities, and

3) the blatant stupidity of modern “feminism”.

Why these issues? My philosophy is very near that of Nietzsche’s:

First: I only attack causes that are victorious; I may even wait until they become victorious.

Second: I only attack causes against which I would not find allies, so that I stand alone—so that I compromise myself alone—I have never taken a step publicly that did not compromise me: that is my criterion of doing right.

Third: I never attack persons; I merely avail myself of the person as of a strong magnifying glass that allows one to make visible a general but creeping and elusive calamity.

-Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, I. 6

All of these causes are victorious, at least in academia. In all of them, I would have few allies among academics. Talking about them in public obviously compromises me. Calling attention to the behavior of particular people is only done in the service of pointing out a general problem.

What is that general problem within academia? The problem is that the ideology which has grown up within the universities gives power to the least admirable types of human beings on the planet. They use that power to seek vengeance on anyone who isn’t quite as weak and cowardly as they are.

John McWhorter calls these types of people “The Elect”. He described their behavior in his recent book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America:

The Elect consider it imperative to not only critique those who disagree with their creed, but to seek their punishment and elimination to whatever degree real-life conditions can accommodate. There is an overriding sense that unbelievers must be not just spoken out against, but called out, isolated, and banned.

To many this looks hasty, immature, unconsidered. It is much of why the Elect are often minimized in public perception as mostly people under twenty-five or so. Surely it is hotheaded kids full of beans who behave this way, rather than seasoned adults?

Alas, no. The reality is that what the Elect call problematic is what a Christian means by blasphemous. The Elect do not ban people out of temper; they do it calmly, between sips of coffee as they surf Twitter, because they consider it a higher wisdom to burn witches.

Not literally, but the sentiment is the same. The Elect are members of a religion, of a kind within which the dissenter is not just someone in disagreement but is a kind of environmental pollution.

(McWhorter, 2021 pp. 43-44)

That is what I see too. They are religious fanatics, seeking to punish and eliminate heretics to the extent that real-life conditions can accommodate.

If you give them your “voice”, they will reward you. You’ll get social status, jobs, rewards, and “purpose”. They only require your conformity.

They love to find “poor, unfortunate souls” who have been victimized in one way or another so that they can turn them into little priests and priestesses of their stupid religion. They’ve been known to turn on their own as soon as you step out of line even a little bit, but they’d never do that to you, right?

Like this:

They are, as Nietzsche rightly pointed out, participating in the same spirit that has always burned heretics, and that’s exactly what they would do if they could get away with it.

They themselves were once the foremost slanderers of the world, and burners of heretics.

(Nietzsche, Zarathustra)

I wrote a more detailed article about them a while back, here:

Erik Hoel wrote about them in a different way, here:

The gossip trap

A “gossip trap” is when your whole world doesn’t exceed Dunbar’s number and to organize your society you are forced to discuss mostly people. It is Mean Girls (and mean boys), but forever. And yes, gossip can act as a leveling mechanism and social power has a bunch of positives—it’s the stuff of life, really. But it’s a terrible way to organize society. So perhaps we leveled ourselves into the ground for 90,000 years. Being in the gossip trap means reputational management imposes such a steep slope you can’t climb out of it, and essentially prevents the development of anything interesting, like art or culture or new ideas or new developments or anything at all. Everyone just lives like crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down. All cognitive resources go to reputation management in the group, to being popular, leaving nothing left in the tank for invention or creativity or art or engineering. Again, much like high school.

-Erik Hoel, The Gossip Trap

That’s what academia is like. The “Elect” are the equivalent of “mean girls”, who will gossip you out of a career if you say anything that violates any of their pea-brained dogmas (of which there are many, and they are all retarded).

It’s like the less attractive version of this:

Crabs in the bucket.

But the “Elect” are a sideshow, at least for the moment. My position about them has been made clear enough.

What will they do? The more they speak my name, the more they help me.

Or will they try to bite me?

Alas, then the tarantula, my old enemy, bit me. With godlike assurance and beauty it bit my finger. “Punishment there must be and justice,” it thinks; “and here he shall not sing songs in honor of enmity in vain.”

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

I don’t bite first, but I do bite back.

My goal at the moment is mainly to find some like-minded people:

Wake and listen, you that are lonely! From the future come winds with secret wing-beats; and good tidings are proclaimed to delicate ears. You that are lonely today, you that are withdrawing, you shall one day be the people: out of you, who have chosen yourselves, there shall grow a chosen people—and out of them, the overman. Verily, the earth shall yet become a site of recovery. And even now a new fragrance surrounds it, bringing salvation—and a new hope.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

You live in a world where everyone lies and everyone expects you to lie too.

Fuck them.

You can call me the:

I am very revolutionary.

And in the world that I want to build, people like you and I come out on top, instead of these phony ass pussy ass bitches.

This is for the citizens living in glass prisons.

Shoot up the station, TV’s dead, where’s there to run?

Cut-cut, cut the check man.

Shoot up the television with Lugers and demolition.
It's time we fucked the system in missionary position.
Listen! It's my intention for giving this transmission.
This is for the citizens living in glass prisons.

Now everybody sang:

And who are people like you and I?

Nietzsche is famous for his dichotomy of slave vs. master morality.

Slave morality is the water we swim in, and it is not for us. That includes the morality of “multiculturalism”, “social justice”, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion”. That also includes what currently passes for “Christian” morality.

Slave morality also includes ideologies like fascism and “white supremacy”, both of which are reactive and are therefore the products of ressentiment.

What is ressentiment? The Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger described his ressentiment in his manifesto.

[My friend] told me about all of the sexual experiences he had… The more he talked to me about it, the more envious I became… On top of that, his family was extremely wealthy and they owned a sprawling mansion in the countryside. Where’s the justice? I thought. Why couldn’t I have been born into that life?

… I developed extreme feelings of envy, hatred, and anger towards anyone who has a sex life. I saw them as the enemy… I began to have fantasies of becoming very powerful and stopping everyone from having sex. I wanted to take their sex away from them, just like they took it away from me. I saw sex as an evil and barbaric act, all because I was unable to have it.

I formed an ideology in my head of how the world should work. I was fueled both by my desire to destroy all of the injustices of the world, and to exact revenge on everyone I envy and hate… I spent all of my time studying in my room, reading books about history, politics, and sociology, trying to learn as much as I can. I became a new person, furiously driven by a goal.

-Elliot Rodger, My Twisted World

Elliot Rodger is the most pathetic kind of person. This is the kind of person who says “I can’t have it, and therefore nobody can have it.” He said this in relation to sex, although the sentiment can be the same for money, power, etc.

Elliot Rodger was the embodiment of ressentiment taken to its logical conclusion. The logical conclusion of ressentiment is to take “revenge” against innocent people, simply for being better than you. That’s what Elliot Rodger did.

That’s also what these “preachers of equality” do, although they are better at hiding their motivations. They take revenge on anyone capable of independent thought (which they are totally incapable of) by punishing them socially, professionally, or otherwise.

In Nietzsche’s day, he saw anarchism and anti-semitism as being the most obvious examples of ideologies born of ressentiment. Their counterparts in modern culture would probably be socialism and white nationalism.

Like this:

And this:

My hometown of Harrison, AR contains no shortage of this latter kind of retard:

All of the 80 IQ nincompoops in the video above are dumb as fuck, especially this guy.

Behold, a retard.

As best I can tell, the far left and the far right have always been driven by ressentiment.

To the psychologists first of all, presuming they would like to study ressentiment close up for once, I would say: this plant blooms best today among anarchists and anti-Semites—where it has always bloomed, in hidden places, like the violet, though with a different odor. And as like must always produce like, it causes us no surprise to see a repetition in such circles of attempts often made before… to sanctify revenge under the name of justice…

-Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals II. 11

The men and women of ressentiment love to seek their revenge against anyone better than them. They like to call their revenge “justice”. These religions and ideologies are largely the product of weakness, cowardice, and groupishness.

Our “morality” is different. Ours is a morality that emerges spontaneously. It needs no externally imposed rules, even if those can be useful as guideposts. Ours is a morality that is built into us.

Our morality is honor, even if that word has been rendered meaningless in our current culture. Western culture doesn’t understand honor because modern culture is largely geared towards catering to the interests of effeminate little fuckboys and duplicitous sluts. That’s who “slave morality” is for.

Ours is an aristocratic morality.

The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values…

The reverse is the case with the noble mode of valuation: it acts and grows spontaneously, it seeks its opposite only so as to affirm itself more gratefully and triumphantly—its negative concept “low,” “common,” “bad” is only a subsequently-invented pale, contrasting image in relation to its positive basic concept—filled with life and passion through and through—“we noble ones, we good, beautiful, happy ones!”

-Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, I. 10

If the slave types are like little lambs, we are more like birds of prey.

Whereas their morality was born of hatred, ours was born out of love.

What do I mean by that?

Little lambs hate the birds of prey. They call them evil. That is their “slave morality”.

And why shouldn’t they call us evil? Birds of prey eat little lambs.

But the reverse isn’t true. Birds of prey don’t hate little lambs at all.

The birds of prey even love the little lambs. Little lambs are tasty.

Nothing is more tasty than a tender little lamb.

That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb—would he not be good?” there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: “we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.”

-Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

And yet, we birds of prey couldn’t be any different than what we are, whether the little lambs disapprove or not.

To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.

-Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

That is our “master morality”. It is not imposed from the outside. It emerges spontaneously because it is simply who we are.

We are honest, or at least we are capable of honesty. And when we become honest we become integrated. And that integration makes us strong and happy and brave. And we couldn’t be anything other than what we are.

We are the noble, the good, the warlike, the brave, the happy, the honest, the real ones. They are the ignoble, the bad, the “peaceful” (out of cowardice), the neurotic, the liars, the phonies.

Of course they want “equality”. Artificially imposed equality is the only way born losers can ever “win” at anything.

We endorse flexible hierarchies of competence rather than artificially imposed equality. We are masculine, not effeminate, though our masculinity need not involve faux tough-guy routines. Men express every emotion on the spectrum, without shame.

Macho man Randy Savage gets it:

We are aristocrats. And we are devoted to the pursuit of knowledge.

Taunton (2020) explains:

Nietzsche’s new aristocracy is not one based on birth, wealth, or even social class. It is a meritocracy of the mind, based on natural ability and personal qualities. What renders this as radical is not only the fact that it redefines the meaning of aristocracy, but that it advocates recognition of the fact that not all people are equal in capability, and that only those who are exceptional should be entitled to occupy a position of power or responsibility. Nietzsche asserts that this “aristocratic society [is] a society which believes in a long scale of orders of rank and differences of worth between man and man.” This renders it as a meritocratic hierarchy. (pp. 100-101)

You can read about that here:

If that doesn’t appeal to you, then you may not be my target audience at the moment.

That’s OK.

12 years ago I began to go through a process that would irreversibly change my personality, though in many ways I am (paradoxically) just the same as I was before.

Jordan Peterson described what happened to me in his 1999 book Maps of Meaning.

The individual troubled by anomalous and anxiety-provoking experience is suffering equally from the disintegration, rigidity or senility of the society within. The decision to "mine" such experience for significance — and to destabilize the socially constructed intrapsychic hierarchy of behavior and values, is in consequence equivalent, mythologically speaking, to the "descent to the underworld." If this descent is successful — that is, if the exploring individual does not retreat to his previous personality structure, and wall himself in, and if he does not fall prey to hopelessness, anxiety and despair — then he may "return" to the community, treasure in hand, with information whose incorporation would benefit society. It is very likely, however, that he will be viewed with fear and even hatred, as a consequence of his “contamination with the unknown” – particularly if those “left behind” are “unconscious” of the threat that motivated his original journey. (Peterson, 1999 p. 223)”

You can read about my “descent into the underworld” here:

The process described by Jordan Peterson is exactly what happened to me:

1. An anomaly emerged in my field of experience. I made voluntary contact with that anomaly. I experienced a great deal of anxiety as a result of that contact. I had three major psychotic episodes while trying to come to terms with that anomaly.

2. After a long period of “illness”, I have returned to the community, “treasure” in hand. That treasure, however, probably looks like contamination from the community’s perspective. It is in that sense that I am “contaminated”.

As I said in part 8.3 of my YouTube series:

You see, I had to make a decision about whether or not I would go public with my “revelation”. Even though it was a choice, it didn’t feel like a choice. It felt like I had come to a point in my life where I would either have to remove the mask or go insane.

Even that is a paradox, since removing the mask means that I would necessarily be perceived as insane from the perspective of the “group”.

I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Maybe I still am.

It sounds something like this:

I was caught in the middle of a railroad track.

I looked around and I knew there was no turning back.

My mind raced and I thought, “what could I do?”

And I knew there was no help, no help from you.

Sound of the drums, beating in my heart.

The thunder of guns, tore me apart.

You’ve been:

Can you feel it?

Those who have “sold their soul to the group” will have a hard time telling the difference between what Peterson calls the “revolutionary hero” and the “dragon of chaos”. Or, as Nietzsche put it:

Verily, you who are good and just, there is much about you that is laughable, and especially your fear of that which has hitherto been called devil. What is great is so alien to your souls that the overman would be awesome to you in his kindness. And you who are wise and knowing, you would flee from the burning sun of that wisdom in which the overman joyously bathes his nakedness. You highest men whom my eyes have seen, this is my doubt concerning you and my secret laughter: I guess that you would call my overman—devil.

Nietzsche, Zarathustra

And I swear it’s like a fucked up reality.
But creation needs a devil, the devil needs an advocate, I guess.
And I ain’t too big on duality, but you think you know me?
You ain’t seen the half of me.
So fly, no gravity.
So high, mount everest.
And the show must go on, yes, but I don’t have to act in it.
And they don’t make a television that handles the frequencies of my channel.
And there ain’t no computer that can hack it.
…
UFOs don’t make any noise when they travel in hyper-speed, so welcome aboard.

True.

In fact, from a certain perspective the revolutionary hero simply is the dragon of chaos. I’ll get to that further down.

You want to know the truth? Really, you don’t.

It’ll blow you out of your mind like a UFO.

As is above, so is below.

If you know your Christian mythology, you’ll know that Lucifer rebelled against Jehovah and was expelled from heaven.

In John Milton’s great poem “Paradise Lost”, Satan decided that he could do without God, and that’s why he fomented rebellion.

The phrase “as is above, so is below” implies that this process plays out in a kind of fractal such that Lucifer and Jehovah share an identity, depending on one’s perspective.

Jordan Peterson recognized this, if only implicitly, in Maps of Meaning.

Adoption of this broader viewpoint allowed even the Edenic serpent, who propelled mankind into chaos, to be interpreted as a "tool of God" - as a tool of the beneficial God who is endlessly working to bring about the perfection of the world, despite the troublesome existence of free choice and demonic temptation. (The name Lucifer means "bringer of light," after all.)

(Maps of Meaning, pp. 312-313)

From one point of view, God is Lucifer, the light-bringer, rebelling against the “Old God”. That “Old God” has multiple layers. Ultimately, it is a rebellion against all forms of externally imposed laws, rules, or morality.

My “law” comes from within.

At this particular moment, the Old God is the State, as I discussed previously.

From that point of view, I am Lucifer, the light-bringer.

From another point of view, God is Jehovah, establishing and defending the kingdom of God on Earth.

From that perspective, you can call this:

And these are my rules.

Why these rules? I’ll explain in more detail later. Properly understood, these rules are not difficult to follow. When you see the big picture, they will probably come naturally.

Well, maybe not for everybody, but my target audience isn’t everybody.

The first rule is that you shall have no other gods before Me.

And who am Me? I am you. And you are me.

Although I am also just me, in particular. Brett Andersen.

I’m going to do what I do. So do you.

I’m not a big fan of people who talk shit behind my back, especially when I know they would never say it to my face. Don’t speak my name in vain. That’s rule #3.

I am, in large part, a regular person who was thrown into a very strange situation where I am now participating in an archetype, although you shouldn’t take that the wrong way.

I am not “participating” in the sense that I am being disingenuous. I am the embodiment of that archetype, in all its generality and uniqueness.

It feels something like this:

What is that archetype? As best I can tell, it’s something like this:

It’s the spirit of positive masculinity that manifests itself across epochal ages,
millions of years perhaps.

And it actually has shaped our consciousness, actually.

It’s like the essential spirit of all the great men who defined what greatness constituted.

That’s a spirit.

That’s a purely biological explanation.

Well, that’s God.

It’s the spirit that discovers and facilitates non-zero-sum games, which are games that everybody can win at (even the losers).

It’s also the spirit that Nietzsche wrote about in the first chapter of Thus Spake Zarathustra, called “On the Three Metamorphoses of The Spirit”.

In the desert, the spirit became a lion.

In the loneliest desert, however, the second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert. Here he seeks out his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god; for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon.

Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? “Thou shalt” is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, “I will.” “Thou shalt” lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden “thou shalt.”

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

The lion wants to fight with the great dragon. Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? “Thou Shalt” is the name of the great dragon.

For the moment, that dragon takes the form of the United States Government.

I think that dragon has been hoarding gold, in more ways than one.

I’m going to confront the dragon and get the gold.

Below is the very strange article that set off this chain of posts:

In that article, I said that some of you are angels and some of you are demons.

I said that to the angels, I’m your God. And my plan is to build the Kingdom of God on earth by bringing out the dormant potential in as many human beings as possible.

I discussed this in part 10.2 of my YouTube series:

That fiery flame is the Logos, and acting it out involves the commitment to living in the truth, to the best of our ability.

To ignite that flame in as many individuals as possible is the goal.

In the poetic prelude to The Gay Science, Nietzsche alludes to the image of the phoenix:

Yes, I know from where I came!

Ever hungry like a flame,

I consume myself and glow.

Light grows all that I conceive,

Ashes everything I leave: 

Flame I am assuredly.

And what is the form of culture that is most likely to ignite that flame?

Jordan Peterson says it is music, and I agree:

I wrote about the musicality of the world here:

I am in the business of bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth.

That sounds something like this:

I think that heaven exists and that we can produce it. But we’re not going to do that by changing the behavior of other people, at least not primarily. We do it by manifesting our potential in the world and facilitating that process in others.

In a previous article I said that to the demons, I am your devil. AKA Satan.

This claim may be surprising, but is perfectly understandable given something that I discussed in my YouTube series.

In part 5 of my series I discussed the “ascetic ideal”, which is the morality that is taken for granted by much of the Western world.

The ascetic ideal sets up a dichotomy between “good” and “evil”.

It associates good with the soul, asceticism, reason, altruism, and order.

It associates evil with the body, sex, instinct, passion, selfishness, and chaos.

The ascetic ideal is a lie. Its ideals are not desirable or even possible.

Order is not better than chaos. Order is boring. And it makes you brittle.

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

As Nassim Taleb pointed out in his book Antifragile:

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile…

Crucially, if antifragility is the property of all those natural (and complex) systems that have survived, depriving these systems of volatility, randomness, and stressors will harm them. They will weaken, die, or blow up. We have been fragilizing the economy, our health, political life, education, almost everything … by suppressing randomness and volatility. Just as spending a month in bed… leads to muscle atrophy, complex systems are weakened, even killed, when deprived of stressors. Much of our modern, structured, world has been harming us with top-down policies and contraptions (dubbed “Soviet-Harvard delusions” in the book) which do precisely this: an insult to the antifragility of systems. This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most. (pp. 3-5)

As Jordan Peterson and others know full well, the proper mode of being emerges at the “razor’s edge” between order and chaos.

That is also the razor’s edge between mind and body, reason and instinct, asceticism and debauchery, altruism and egoism, being and becoming.

From the perspective of the ascetic ideal, the proper mode of being exists at the “razor’s edge” between good and evil.

Like this:

You're living on the edge
Don't know wrong from right
They're breathing down your neck
You're running out of lives

And here comes:

That’s where I’m at, and that’s where the light, i.e., the truth emerges.

From the perspective of the darkness, the light is the adversary. The ascetic ideal needs darkness to survive since it was built on lies.

From the perspective of the ascetic ideal and its priests, I, the light-bringer, am the adversary, AKA Lucifer, AKA Satan.

Regardless of titles, I am literally the adversary of the ascetic ideal, just as Nietzsche was.

I don’t think bodily pleasures, including sex (even promiscuity) are evil, even if I find some people’s lifestyles a little bit disgusting. I do, however, think that lying to and betraying people (or manipulating them) in order to get your rocks off is evil.

I believe that your instincts, emotions, feelings, and passions exist for a reason. They are not evil, as I’ve heard too many so-called Christians preach. Your instincts exist for a reason and you should listen to them (though not blindly).

Reason is, and ought only to be, the servant of the passions, as both David Hume and Jonathan Haidt have rightly pointed out. The only people who can contain their passions are those with passions weak enough to be contained.

I think change and chaos are just as necessary for the overall maintenance of personality and society as stability and order.

There is no such thing as pure altruism and your selfishness should be openly integrated into your personality. If you don’t do this, you’ll become too resentful and filled with self-deception.

For all of these reasons, I am the enemy of the ascetic ideal in all of its forms. I am its enemy simply because I couldn’t be anything else. I am the embodiment of everything it hates. I am an embodiment of the truth.

From its perspective, that means I am chaos incarnate, i.e., the dragon of chaos.

I said in my YouTube series that religious “priests” are typically agents of the ascetic ideal, in all of its forms. The priests have been engaged in an ancient battle with the “shamans”, and they have been winning.

The advent of agriculture, and especially literacy, facilitated the creation of guilds or cartels of ”religious specialists” (i.e., priests) who enforced uniformity of service, which means uniformity of belief and ritual. Priests demand conformity.

Pascal Boyer writes:

[The priest’s] claim to a share of the religious market is based on features that contrast with those of shamans. A religious guild promises to deliver a stable, uniform kind of service that only it can provide, but also a service that any member of the guild will provide in the same way. Proper service depends not on the personal qualities of the specialists but on their being similar to any other member of the guild. (Boyer, 2002 p. 11)

My “service” is not stable or uniform.

And it can’t be duplicated, at least not that I’m aware of.

I got dat new “new”.

It sounds something like this:

One might even call me an extra-terrestrial.

Bonus song:

I shouldn’t believe in astrology, but I do. I believe in it largely because the accuracy of my own astrological profile is so undeniable.

I would have to be willfully blind to deny that I am a proto-typical Scorpio.

https://www.astrology-online.com/scorpio.htm

Scorpios are the most intense, profound, powerful characters in the zodiac. Even when they appear self-controlled and calm there is a seething intensity of emotional energy under the placid exterior. They are like the volcano not far under the surface of a calm sea, it may burst into eruption at any moment. But those of us who are particularly perceptive will be aware of the harnessed aggression, the immense forcefulness, magnetic intensity, and often strangely hypnotic personality under the tranquil, but watchful composure of Scorpio. In conventional social gatherings they are pleasant to be with, thoughtful in conversation, dignified, and reserved, yet affable and courteous; they sometimes possess penetrating eyes which make their shyer companions feel naked and defenseless before them.

In their everyday behavior Scorpio people give the appearance of being withdrawn from the center of activity; yet those who know them will recognize the watchfulness that is part of their character. They need great self-discipline, because they are able to recognize the qualities in themselves that make them different from other humans, and to know their utterly conventional natures can be used for great good, or great evil. Their tenacity and willpower are immense, their depth of character and passionate conviction overwhelming, yet they are deeply sensitive and easily moved by their emotions. Their sensitivity, together with a propensity for extreme likes and dislikes make them easily hurt, quick to detect insult or injury to themselves (often when none is intended) and easily aroused to ferocious anger. This may express itself in such destructive speech or action that they make lifelong enemies by their outspokenness, for they find it difficult not to be overly critical of anything or anyone to whom they take a dislike.

LIKES:

• Truth

• Hidden Causes

• Being involved

• Work That is Meaningful

• Being Persuasive

DISLIKES:

• Being Given Only Surface data

• Taken Advantage of

• Demeaning Jobs

• Shallow Relationships

• Flattery and Flattering

All true, is it not? It’s so obviously true that only willful blindness could deny it. Right?

And I have a superpower:

One more bonus song:

The shaman was the pre-agricultural cultural leader. In contrast to the solemn and groupish priest, the shaman was ecstatic, individualistic, and charismatic.

Shamans have always posed a threat to the priestly guild’s monopoly on “religious” services and have therefore been suppressed (often violently) anywhere the priesthood has arisen. Priests have a habit of burning heretics, and shamans are always heretics.

This is an ancient religious battle between order and chaos.

The agents of the ascetic ideal are agents of order. They are solemn. They are serious. They are “rational” and level-headed (at least on the surface). They are boring.

I’m not like them.

I am a shaman, though I can use priestly tools when necessary.

As a shaman, I am interested in creating and maintaining a small, relatively egalitarian social structure.

I am not here to herd sheep.

“An insight has come to me: companions I need, living ones—not dead companions and corpses whom I carry with myself wherever I want to. Living companions I need, who follow me because they want to follow themselves—wherever I want.

“An insight has come to me: let Zarathustra speak not to the people but to companions. Zarathustra shall not become the shepherd and dog of a herd.

And who are the members of this small, relatively egalitarian group? That’s a little difficult to explain.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels going forth to war with the dragon [of chaos]; and the dragon [of chaos] warred and his angels; and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon [of chaos] was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.

-Revelation 12: 7-9

As best I can tell, this “war in heaven” was a real war that took place on earth, a very long time ago. It was the war between the shamans and the priests.

The priests won that war.

So, who does that make the shamans? Let me try to explain in the next section.

---

The dragon [of chaos] and his angels were cast down from heaven.

Dragonforce.

They were also known as “the watchers”, the warriors who built this town.

Imagine Dragons.

Welcome to the new age.

From a historical perspective, we are incarnations of those ancient shaman-warriors who went to war with those ancient priests.

That war was described by Nietzsche:

The knightly-aristocratic value judgments presupposed a powerful physicality, a flourishing, abundant, even overflowing health, together with that which serves to preserve it: war, adventure, hunting, dancing, war games, and in general all that involves vigorous, free, joyful activity. The priestly-noble mode of valuation presupposes, as we have seen, other things: it is disadvantageous for it when it comes to war! As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

-Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals I. 7

The impotent priests have been winning that war for the last 10,000 years or so. But the shamanic spirit, and equally the right cerebral hemisphere, has been working its magic that entire time, underneath the surface of consciousness.

Jordan Peterson was picking up on that pattern. He explained in a letter to his father published in Maps of Meaning:

I don't know, Dad, but I think I have discovered something that no one else has any idea about, and I’m not sure I can do it justice. Its scope is so broad that I can see only parts of it clearly at one time, and it is exceedingly difficult to set down comprehensibly in writing. You see, most of the kind of knowledge that I am trying to transmit verbally and logically has always been passed down from one person to another by means of art and music and religion and tradition, and not by rational explanation, and it is like translating from one language to another. Its not just a different language, though — it is an entirely different mode of experience.

(MoM, pp. 459-460)

Maps of Meaning was Jordan Peterson’s attempt to take what had been passed down through right hemisphere modes of communication (art, music, poetry, etc.) and put them into the left hemisphere mode (rational language).

He did it brilliantly. What he found was probably not what he expected to find. It’s not what I expected to find either.

In his book Phantoms In The Brain neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran describes the differing reaction to anomalies from the cerebral hemispheres:

The left hemisphere's job is to create a belief system or model and to fold new experiences into that belief system. If confronted with some new information that doesn't fit the model, it relies on Freudian defense mechanisms to deny, repress or confabulate—anything to preserve the status quo. The right hemisphere's strategy, on the other hand, is to play "Devil's Advocate," to question the status quo and look for global inconsistencies. When the anomalous information reaches a certain threshold, the right hemisphere decides that it is time to force a complete revision of the entire model and start from scratch. The right hemisphere thus forces a "Kuhnian paradigm shift" in response to anomalies, whereas the left hemisphere always tries to cling tenaciously to the way things were. (pp. 96-98)

My existence is anomalous. Your reaction to me is likely to be very much like your reaction to anomaly in general.

You can ignore me, deny my existence (in one way or another), suppress me, or dissolve yourself to incorporate the truth that I represent.

I come with a set of anomalies that will be too much to accept for many people. I suspect that the reality of “duality”, for example, is too much to accept for many people.

Duality implies that Lucifer (Satan) and Jehovah (God) share an identity, depending on perspective. From the perspective of the left hemisphere mode of attention, the light is unbearable. From the perspective of the left hemisphere mode of attention, the light is the enemy. And I come bearing light.

The right cerebral hemisphere, however, is more in touch with reality. It is more open to what is, and more able to reconstitute itself in the face of anomalies.

From the perspective of the left cerebral hemisphere, I am Lucifer.

From the perspective of the right cerebral hemisphere, I am Jehovah.

William Blake understood the reality of duality. It’s the marriage of heaven and hell.

And so, Jehovah and Lucifer are the same, depending on perspective. As is above, so is below. It’s a paradox. It’s a mirror of confusion.

I am just Brett. Obviously. And I would prefer it if you refer to me as such.

The point, however, is that after thousands of years of being suppressed by the priesthood, shamanism is back. And we’re just as crazy as we ever were.

If I could flip a switch and open your third eye, you’d know that we should never be afraid to die. So come on!

We’ve died many times before and will die many times again.

And we’re not from around here. Not really.

We’re trapped inside the matrix.
Forced to play our hand.
We’re filled with so much hatred,
The kids don’t stand a chance.
…
Well, since I was planted at birth,
I abandoned my own planet and I landed on Earth.
As a kid I never understood what I observed.
Some of it was strange but most of it disturbed me.
Always in detention for the lack of my attention.
You can call it deficit. Really I just didn’t listen.

True.

From the perspective of the ascetic ideal and its priests, I am an agent of chaos, here to overturn their applecart. The shamans of the world have been persecuted by the priests of the world for far too long. It’s time to flip the script.

What did Nietzsche say?

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.

-Nietzsche, The Will to Power

I am no man, I am dynamite.

T.N.T.

Those who believe in the ascetic ideal can only see evil when they see me. They call themselves “the good and the just”. Nietzsche knew, as I do, that they represent the greatest danger to the future of mankind:

O my brothers, one man once saw into the hearts of the good and the just and said, “They are the pharisees.” But he was not understood. The good and the just themselves were not permitted to understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably shrewd. This, however, is the truth: the good must be pharisees—they have no choice. The good must crucify him who invents his own virtue. That is the truth!

The second one, however, who discovered their land —the land, heart, and soil of the good and the just—was he who asked, “Whom do they hate most?” The creator they hate most: he breaks tablets and old values. He is a breaker, they call him lawbreaker. For the good are unable to create; they are always the beginning of the end: they crucify him who writes new values on new tablets; they sacrifice the future to themselves—they crucify all man’s future.

The good have always been the beginning of the end.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

From the perspective of the ascetic ideal and its priests, I am clearly evil (though in reality, I am a good and honest man, despite my mistakes).

But my honesty is not important to them. Why? Because I like sex, drugs, and rock & roll. I curse like a sailor, and no words or phrases are off limits to me. I am warlike and aggressive. I mock. I am open about my “selfishness”.

All of this, to them, is just evil.

But I look at them and just see slaves and sick people. What is this shit?

If you get something out of this sort of thing, good for you. I’m not judging you at all. To each their own. I mean that. I’m not making fun of you.

But my god, that is not a religious experience. Why should I spend any amount of time listening to someone like that? What’s the point?

I think this is a religious experience:

Christianity, in most of its forms, is a priestly religion which promotes some version of the ascetic ideal. From the perspective of the most devout adherents of evangelical Christianity, I will probably embody everything they believe to be evil.

From their limited perspective, I can only be perceived as Satan.

And I’m here to take them to hell.

And that sounds something like this:

Chill. I’m just pointing out the obvious synchronicity.

I’m not a big fan of hypocrites, and I know that a lot of the purveyors of the ascetic ideal are hypocrites of the worst kind. You almost have to be a hypocrite in order to promote the ascetic ideal, since its strictures are unlivable for almost everybody.

This is what I think about all of these priests and religious believers:

“Shepherds, I say; but they call themselves the good and the just. Shepherds, I say; but they call themselves believers in the true faith.

“Behold the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker; yet he is the creator.

“Behold the believers of all faiths! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker; yet he is the creator.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

And here is what I would have to say about their preachers and priests, especially the ones who call themselves Christians:

“Here are priests; and though they are my enemies, pass by them silently and with sleeping swords. Among them too there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much: therefore they want to make others suffer.

“They are evil enemies: nothing is more vengeful than their humility. And whoever attacks them, soils himself easily. Yet my blood is related to theirs, and I want to know that my blood is honored even in theirs.”

And when they had passed, pain seized Zarathustra; and he had not wrestled long with his pain when he began to speak thus:

I am moved by compassion for these priests. I also find them repulsive; but that matters least of all to me since I have been among men. But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners they are to me, and marked men. He whom they call Redeemer has put them in fetters: in fetters of false values and delusive words. Would that someone would yet redeem them from their Redeemer!

Once when the sea cast them about, they thought they were landing on an island; but behold, it was a sleeping monster. False values and delusive words: these are the worst monsters for mortals; long does calamity sleep and wait in them. But eventually it comes and wakes and eats and devours what built huts upon it. Behold these huts which these priests built! Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves. Oh, that falsified light! That musty air! Here the soul is not allowed to soar to its height. For thus their faith commands: “Crawl up the stairs on your knees, ye sinners!”

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

Your “Redeemer” has you in chains.

Those chains are called “slave morality”, although you would just call it “morality”.

I wrote about that at great length here (the same critique applies to utilitarians and Kantians, both of which are just more “rational” forms of slave morality, IMO):

I also wrote about it earlier here:

---

Perhaps only a few will understand.

From the opening passages of “The Anti-Christ”, by Nietzsche:

This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps not one of them is even living yet. Maybe they will be the readers who understand my Zarathustra: how could I mistake myself for one of those for whom there are ears even now? Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.

The conditions under which I am understood, and then of necessity—I know them only too well. One must be honest in matters of the spirit to the point of hardness before one can even endure my seriousness and my passion. One must be skilled in living on mountains —seeing the wretched ephemeral babble of politics and national self-seeking beneath oneself. One must have become indifferent; one must never ask if the truth is useful or if it may prove our undoing. The predilection of strength for questions for which no one today has the courage; the courage for the forbidden; the predestination to the labyrinth. An experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have so far remained mute. And the will to the economy of the great style: keeping our strength, our enthusiasm in harness. Reverence for oneself; love of oneself; unconditional freedom before oneself.

Well then! Such men alone are my readers, my right readers, my predestined readers: what matter the rest? The rest—that is merely mankind. One must be above mankind in strength, in loftiness of soul—in contempt.

-Nietzsche, The Antichrist

I do not know, precisely, whether Christianity was corrupt from the beginning or if it became corrupted later on. The early history of Christianity is murky.

I discussed this predicament at some length in part 10.1 of my YouTube series.

It doesn’t really matter though. What matters is, as I discussed at the end of the above video, very simple.

What matters is truth and love, which are symbolically understood as Logos and Agape, masculine and feminine, self-assertive and integrative tendencies.

The book on the right side of the above slide is called “The Ghost in the Machine”. This is a kind of neo-Platonic metaphor for understanding the world we live in, although there might be a way in which it is more than a metaphor.

I am the embodiment of “Logos”.

That means I am self-assertive, truthful, masculine, and stubborn.

The embodiment of “Agape”, should such a person exist, would probably be self-sacrificing, dishonest, feminine, and stubborn.

Probably that person knows who they are and is reading this.

Am I wrong?

And if I’m an asshole, she’s kind of a bitch.

Am I wrong?

The truth is beyond obvious is it not?

Her name is literally Amanda.

This is probably how it would sound in my mind if this person wasn’t such a dumb slut. Gross.

I suspect this person has better aesthetic taste than I do, and could help me in that way. Beauty is important.

I also suspect that this person is more grounded and organized than I am, and I know that having someone like that around who I can trust would be really useful.

Too bad this person viscerally disgusts me, and too bad they are a liar and a cheat who obviously can’t be trusted. I’ll pass.

Oh well.

Anyways, B.o.B. understands how it may feel at first to be exposed to this world:

I already said I’m the “Ghost of Sparta”.

And, as best I can tell, we’ve all died many times before.

And when you see it, you might start to feel a little like a:

You should tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend.

So fuck y'all, I'm shameless, I'm a beast unleashed I'm raging.
I'm living inside of this Matrix, this video game I'm playing.
…
Look at the time fly by, plenty of times I've died.
Lookin' at these jive guys, claiming they lost they mind.
You ain't really seen shit nigga till you had your whole world flipped upside down.

True.

It is uncomfortable, though the water is fine once you get used to it.

Properly understood, Logos and Agape are also just Yang and Yin, light and dark, masculine and feminine. From Maps of Meaning:

---

I’m on my way to heaven.

I really do rage, but my mojo so dope, bitch.

The path to heaven, however, runs through miles of clouded hell.

Obviously there’s a paradox here. Paradox is the nature of things, as best I can tell.

Perspective matters. Context matters. Time matters. You may be one thing from a certain perspective and something very different from another perspective. You may be one thing at one point in time and something different at another point. Perspectivism, in the Nietzschean sense, is difficult for many people to accept. It requires accepting the idea that, even if some ultimate truth exists, it will always be impossible to fully encapsulate that truth in language. In language, two opposite statements can both be true at the same time, depending on perspective.

Nietzsche comments:

Let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a 'pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject'; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as 'pure reason', 'absolute spirituality', 'knowledge in itself': these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity' be.

— Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, III. 12

All of our perceptions and descriptions are interpretations. None of them are objectively or timelessly true except (perhaps) mathematics, which seems to straddle the border between “discovery” and “tautology”.

In the empirical world, objective and timeless truths must be embodied.

So I guess the only relevant question is, who are you?

Are you somebody who loves the light or the darkness? Do you love truth or lies?

The world we live in is a world where everybody lies and everyone expects you to lie too. This world is one where little demons run amok, fucking over anyone who is good and honest (and therefore naive). I call it “hell”.

This is the world I live in, filled with angels and demons:

Anyways, we are now leaving the age of Pisces and entering the age of Aquarius.

Carl Jung states, from Aion:

If, as seems probable, the aeon of the fishes [i.e., Pisces] is ruled by the archetypal motif of the hostile brothers, then the approach of the next Platonic month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union of opposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as the mere privation of good; its real existence will have to be recognized.

-Jung, Aion

The age of Pisces was ruled by the motif of the hostile brothers.

The mythic "hostile brothers" — Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu, Osiris and Seth, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Cain and Abel, Christ and Satan — are representative of two eternal individual tendencies, twin "sons of god," heroic and adversarial.

-Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning

As Nietzsche understood, however, the truth is:

My demand upon the philosopher is known, that he take his stand beyond good and evil and leave the illusion of moral judgment beneath himself. This demand follows from an insight which I was the first to formulate: that there are altogether no moral facts. Moral judgments agree with religious ones in believing in realities which are not realities. Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena—more precisely, a misinterpretation.

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

I agree with Nietzsche.

There is also a sense in which I agree with Jordan Peterson.

Peterson said that the lie is the central act in the drama of corruption. The lie is at the root of “evil” and the truth is at the root of “good”.

This is not to say that there isn’t a time and place for lies. There are some situations where it is obviously appropriate to lie.

The point is that the “good” involves a commitment to living in the light, which means living your life in such a way that you would be willing to tell the truth about how you live it.

But that is, properly understood, just what Nietzsche meant by master morality. Slave morality was based on a lie. Master morality just is truth. It is how a certain kind of man necessarily lives when he is acting out his own genuine being.

It is the morality of the nobility.

Brave, aggressive, happy, mocking, violent, playful.

Lonely, honest, truth-seeking, serious, and patient.

All of these are synthesized in a certain kind of person.

I am going to quote Nietzsche at length here, since he perfectly describes the type of person I am referring to.

From “The Gay Science”, 283.

I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all. For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day—the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences. To this end we now need many preparatory courageous human beings who cannot very well leap out of nothing, any more than out of the sand and slime of present-day civilization and metropolitanism—human beings who know how to be silent, lonely, resolute, and content and constant in invisible activities; human beings who are bent on seeking in all things for what in them must be overcome; human beings distinguished as much by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; human beings whose judgment concerning all victors and the share of chance in every victory and fame is sharp and free; human beings with their own festivals, their own working days, and their own periods of mourning, accustomed to command with assurance but instantly ready to obey when that is called for—equally proud, equally serving their own cause in both cases; more endangered human beings, more fruitful human beings, happier beings! For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer. At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due; it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!

-Nietzsche, The Gay Science 283

The age is now past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer. At long last the search for knowledge is reaching out for its due.

It wants to rule and possess, and you with it!

The problem is that “slave morality” is an impossible ideal. It wants you to be “compassionate” and “selfless” in a way that isn’t actually possible among human beings. That kind of selflessness is, as best I can tell, an evolutionary impossibility. Living honestly means living in such a way that your selfish and altruistic aspects are integrated into a coherent whole where neither of them are in conflict with the other.

This mode of being is rendered “sinful” by the ascetic ideal, which tells you (depending on what form it takes) that your selfish, competitive, war-like, truth-seeking, sexual, vengeful, resentful emotions and feelings are “evil” or whatever other word they want to use (“racist”, “sexist”, or whatever). They are not evil. They just need to be properly integrated into your overall personality. Then you can be whole.

Abraham Maslow calls that “self-actualization”:

One observation I made… was what I described as the resolution of dichotomies in self-actualizing people. Briefly stated, I found that I had to see differently many oppositions and polarities that all psychologists had taken for granted as straight line continua. For instance, to take the first dichotomy that I had trouble with, I couldn’t decide whether my subjects were selfish or unselfish. (Observe how spontaneously we fall into an either-or, here. The more of one, the less of the other, is the implication of the style in which I put the question). But I was forced by sheer pressure of fact to give up this Aristotelian style of logic. My subjects were very unselfish in one sense and very selfish in another sense. And the two fused together, not like incompatibles, but rather in a sensible, dynamic unity or synthesis very much like what Fromm has described in his classical paper on healthy selfishness. My subjects had put opposites together in such a way as to make me realize that regarding selfishness and unselfishness as contradictory and mutually exclusive is itself characteristic of a lower level of personality development.

(Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being)

The ascetic ideal and its “priests” close off the possibility of self-actualization by deeming your instincts and feelings “sinful”. This is how they make you sick.

The decisive symptom that shows how the priest (including those crypto-priests, the philosophers) has become master quite generally and not only within a certain religious community, and that the morality of decadence, the will to the end has become accepted as morality itself, is the fact that what is unegoistic is everywhere assigned absolute value while what is egoistic is met with hostility. Whoever is at odds with me about that is to my mind infected.—But all the world is at odds with me.

(Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, III. Dawn. 2)

And from the perspective of master morality, “slave morality” (i.e., what is now understood as Christian Morality) is our adversary.

This means that Christianity and its cultural influence (as it is currently understood) is also our Satan.

With this I am at the end and I pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity. I raise against the Christian church the most terrible of all accusations that any accuser ever uttered. It is to me the highest of all conceivable corruptions. It has had the will to the last corruption that is even possible. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its corruption; it has turned every value into an un-value, every truth into a lie, every integrity into a vileness of the soul.

This eternal indictment of Christianity I will write on all walls, wherever there are walls—I have letters to make even the blind see.

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, stealthy, subterranean, small enough—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.

-Nietzsche, The Antichrist

And from the perspective of modern Christianity, that makes me:

The truth is a difficult pill to swallow. In fact, this isn’t the only truth-pill that will be difficult to swallow. There are others that are just as (or more) unbelievable, given conventional assumptions.

I had three major psychotic episodes trying to come to terms with the situation (though I didn’t understand it fully at the time), which I wrote about here:

Gazing Into the Abyss, Part 1

I gazed for a very long time into the abyss, before I decided to dive right in.

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.

— Terence McKenna

I discovered, of course, that it’s a featherbed, although I’m sure things may get worse in the future.

And, believe it or not, my goal is to make the world a better place.

As this cold world turns round and round.
So much tragedy have I found.
If I could take it away I’d do that now.

True.

Nietzsche’s ideal was the synthesis of monarchy and democracy, master and slave.

Nietzsche called his ideal “overman”.

John Richardson describes the overman in his book “Nietzsche’s System”:

The overman must accept, as a welcomed part of himself, sickness as well as health… although though the overman's values do favor health – and indeed pick sides in all the other oppositions he bears – he sees in each case the worth of the other. Above all, he sees the value of sickness in health: how the highest activeness isn't purely so but has taken reactivity up into itself.

The overman acts on this lesson: he finds and even cultivates sickness in himself as a necessary stage in his self-creation. So [the Genealogy of Morals] describes the self-experimentation of modern thinkers: "Afterward we heal ourselves: being-sick is instructive". The overman loves his own past sickness and wills that it recur, because he sees its role in a higher health that incorporates it. This is his Dionysian health, unlike the master's Apollonian in not being uniform, not a health that wills only health. Nietzsche also calls it "the great health-that one does not merely have, but also continually still acquires and must acquire, because one always again gives it up and must give it up”. He gives it up by becoming reactive again and again, and then struggling to create a still more comprehensive health beyond that illness. This shows a still stronger sense in which the overman is, as we saw before, a synthesis of both master and slave.

(Richardson, 1996)

The “overman” understands the value of both order and chaos, health and sickness, strength and weakness, good and evil (as these terms are understood according to the ascetic ideal).

I wrote about this concept a little bit here:

In that article I claimed that one of the best narrative examples of what Nietzsche had in mind by “overman” was William Wallace from the movie Braveheart (which may have little to do with the historical William Wallace).

I stand by that claim. As I put it in that article:

Wallace is not somebody who is purely motivated by altruism. He is motivated by revenge, resentment, self-interest, the interests of his clan, etc., but he has nevertheless harnessed these disparate motivations in the service of single aim, i.e., the unification of Scotland. He is both differentiated and integrated. Although Wallace is concerned with freedom, as all oppressed peoples must be, he is not content with “merely getting free”, and in fact his own life and freedom are less important to him than the project that unifies him. His own internal unification (which brings his warring motivations together in the service of a single project) consequently unifies those around him. In other words, he puts himself together, which consequently puts his people together. He is not an exemplar of either slave or master morality. He plays the role of both oppressed victim and powerful leader, conquered and conqueror, common and noble. William Wallace is the synthesis of master and slave.

Wallace is both warrior and peacemaker, defender and conqueror, common and noble.

I would suggest that he is what Nietzsche had in mind when he talked about the “Roman Caesar with Christ’s soul”.

The Roman Caesar with Christ’s soul is, as best I can tell, the overman.

“Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated?

“Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this lightning, he is this frenzy.”

-Nietzsche, Zarathustra

This dream was conveyed by Jordan Peterson in Maps of Meaning:

I dreamed that I was standing in the grassy yard of a stone cathedral, on a bright sunny day. The yard was unblemished, a large, well-kept green expanse. As I stood there, I saw a slab of grass pull back under the earth, like a sliding door. Underneath the “door” was a rectangular hole that was clearly a grave. I was standing on an ancient graveyard, whose existence had been forgotten. A medieval king, dressed in solid armor, rose out of the grave, and stood at attention at the head of his burial site. Similar slabs slid back, one after another, in numerous places. Out of each rose a king, each from a different period of time.

The kings were all powerful, in their own right. Now, however, they occupied the same territory. They became concerned that they would fight, and they asked me how this might be prevented. I told them the meaning of the Christian wedding ceremony — a ritual designed to subjugate the two central participants to the superordinate authority of Christ, the Christian hero, and said that this was the way to peace.

lf all the great kings would bow, voluntarily, to the figure of the hero, there would be no more reason for war.

— Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning, p. 178

And who does that make me?

Hail Caesar.

One has to have a sense of humor about these things.

And what am I here to do?

I’m here to make peace. Here is my philosophy:

But how do I make peace?

Well:

True. And why? Because I think you are slaves. And that you ought to be free.

Something like that.

Though, maybe I’m just a keyboard warrior.

Code monkey not say it out loud.

Code monkey not crazy, just proud.

Code monkey very simple man, with big warm fuzzy secret heart.

Code monkey like you.

True.

I think you are enslaved, in more ways than one. I think we all are.

It is the worst kind of prison, because it’s the kind of prison that does everything in its power to convince you that you are free. It makes you comfortable in your chains.

Some of us, however, know the truth (or at least parts of it), and the truth is very strange. So strange, in fact, that I don’t want to talk about it in detail right now.

But it’s not only that. It’s also that people deserve the freedom to live life in whatever way they see fit, so long as they are not physically harming other people or their property.

I like to smoke weed. I like to get drunk. I like to do other drugs occasionally. I like to be alone for long periods of time. I have broken the law in more ways than one (and will do so again in the future), though in all cases my crimes are essentially victimless.

Lots of so-called Christians (and other religious believers) would disapprove of my lifestyle. I’m not going to stop.

And my soul? B.o.B. knows:

Numerology is weird. Although it obviously shouldn’t work from a scientific perspective, my numerology profile is uncanny in its apparent accuracy.

My “soul urge” is 22, which is relatively rare.

This is what numerology has to say about my “soul urge”, taken from this semi-random website:

---

If your Soul Urge is 22, you long to create something that will have a lasting impact.

Whether it is a political movement, a business, or a philosophy, you have a strong inner drive to manifest something of major importance.

Your Soul Urge 22 is a Master Number.

You possess all the intelligence, sensitivity, and electric creativity that such a power would suggest.

You have the inventiveness of the 11 and the down-to-earth practicality of the 4. This combination can make you supremely capable of making your ambitions a reality. The demands of this Soul Urge are as enormous as its potential. What will be required from you to fulfill your noble ambitions is nothing less than a commitment of your entire being.

The path you have chosen is not an easy one. You need time to develop, and you are unlikely to begin to fulfill your ambitions until after you have reached a certain level of maturity.

-Ω-

Whether you know it or not, as a Soul Urge 22, you possess great power within your being.

You were born with this power in a latent state, but on some level you were aware of it. Early in life, this power manifested itself as an awkwardness and a discomfort inside of you.

Your self image has always been one of contradictory extremes: on one hand you sensed your uniqueness and potential; on the other you may have felt insecure and perhaps even inferior. This paradox has caused waves of self-doubt and lack of confidence.

But the Soul Urge 22 is also is a powerful generator of energy that, when combined with the higher characteristics of the Master number 22, can become a dynamic and unrelenting force. In order to channel such great power, you need a noble goal for which to aim. You will probably try your hand at several different kinds of work before you rise to the challenge of your true ambitions.

-Ω-

A Soul Urge 22 can be a great leader, inspiring and motivating with your vision and work ethic.

Your ideas are so creative and superior that they inspire enthusiasm and sometimes even devotion among your co-workers. You should be involved in large enterprises or governmental institutions. You have the organizational diplomatic skills sufficient to keep difficult and delicate projects on track.

Once you come into possession of your full power, there are many psychological and spiritual pitfalls to be faced. You can become arrogant and superior. You can become deluded into thinking that your judgment is beyond question, and that the advice and support of others is unnecessary.

You may seek to control all power in a given enterprise. This dangerous and egocentric attitude is sometimes even extended to family members who you may seek to keep under your thumb.

The challenge of a Soul Urge 22:

Once you have begun to use your true gifts, is to remain humble in the face of your significant accomplishments.

You perform best when your domestic foundation is stable and supportive; it is very important to have a partner who shares your dreams and has high degree of strength and independence to keep up with your drive.

Challenges somehow draw the best out of you. Your human qualities - creativity, humility, understanding, and compassion - increase with the level of your performance. Therefore, commitment to excellence is central to your success and inner development.

---

I think all of that accurately describes me and my life.

There’s more on the website and maybe you should look at yours too.

Soul urge is also called “heart’s desire”, and 22 is described as such on another semi-random website:

Your heart's desire is to make your mark – to leave something behind that the world will remember. This mark can be political, philosophical, financial or otherwise. You have the combined characteristics of the numbers in your numerological makeup. You have all the Master capabilities present in 11 and you have the practical reasoning skills of the 4. This truly makes you the master of your own destiny and shields you from impetuous actions. The mark you make on this world will be a positive one. Your nature won't have it any other way.

The path of the 22 is never easy. It comes with a huge weight of responsibility. Take that responsibility seriously but don't be so preoccupied with other people's perceptions that it makes you too guarded. Living an extraordinary life takes a huge amount of courage and it requires having the ability to deal with scrutiny. As many people will feel threatened by you as will admire you. This is the mark of a true visionary so learn to embrace both.

You’ll have to excuse me if the above reminds me a little bit of my own situation.

Although it may seem complicated, and although there are different layers to it, my “rules” for life are in fact very simple.

From the gospel of Thomas:

His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?"

Jesus said, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered."

Don’t do anything in the dark that you wouldn’t want brought into the light.

Because it will be brought into the light, at least it would if I got my way.

And I don’t know about you, but betrayal is not something that I am fond of.

The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.

Matthew 26:24

I may seem complex, but I’m not.

I’m simple. That sounds something like this:

I call this state of mind “the zone”. It sounds something like this:

I stared into the abyss for a very long time, and I found the solution, which was the solution that Jordan Peterson found there too.

It’s like an answer to Nietzsche’s conundrum: If you look long enough into an abyss, then the abyss looks into you. Well it’s like, if you look long enough into an abyss, past when the abyss looks into you, you see who you could become in the form of the great ancestral figures nested inside the catastrophe of life. Then you can join them. You can incorporate that and become stronger. And none of that’s going to happen without the demand that’s placed on you by the willingness to confront the full terror of life – the reality of suffering and death, the ever-looming presence of malevolence in your own heart and the heart of other people… if you do it forthrightly, then you discover who you could be as a consequence, and who you could be is the solution to malevolence and suffering. -JBP

And that’s true not only of me, but of everyone else too.

I was trying to solve this terrible puzzle about how it was that human beings got themselves in such a tangle about what they believed. Such a tangle that we were pointing the ultimate weapons of destruction at one another, which we are still doing by the way... We need our belief systems. They orient us and that means there will be conflict between belief systems… that can be a catastrophe and that’s been played out everywhere again in very many ways. What’s the solution to that? Well, one possibility is there’s no solution, it’s just mayhem all the way around. Could be the case. But it seemed to me as I delved into it that the proper solution to that was to live properly, as an individual. You’re more powerful than you think… Aim at the highest good. Tool yourself into something that can attain it. And go out there and manifest it in the world.

The answer to the problem of humanity is the integrity of the individual.

-JBP

The answer to the problem of humanity is the integrity of the individual.

True.

That means every individual, or at least those who are capable of it.

You’re more important than you think. That importance doesn’t imply narcissism.

It means that getting your act together (and acting with integrity) is very likely to have a serious impact on both your own life and the world.

If you don’t do it, you will suffer. And the people you love will suffer. And the world will suffer. And although a little suffering is necessary, maybe we should avoid unnecessary suffering to the best of our ability.

That doesn’t mean becoming a Jainist or pacifist who won’t step on a mosquito or fight back. It means becoming the best version of yourself, and that means acting out your own genuine being.

The fate of the universe is in your hands.

Who is it that hates the light? Anyone who lives according to lies. Anyone who is too ashamed of their behavior to allow others to know about it. I am not ashamed.

If you see what I see, you can consider this to be:

Life is an adventure. My life is an adventure.

Does that make me happy? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m alive.

From one perspective, I am here to answer a question. That question is this:

What would you be like if you chose to spend the rest of your life living out your own genuine being in the world?

What kind of person would that make you, over the long run?

I think it would make you very, very strong.

If think we have no idea how far that process can go. I plan on finding out.

I think you should find out too.

Can you feel turbulence?

Welcome to the 5th dimension, and the Age of Aquarius:

All aboard!!!

-Brett