All posts by Indy

philosophy, politics

>The End of the Apocalypse

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What will it take for you to finally call these last days what they really are: The end of the apocalypse.
The extermination of six hundred species per day? The starvation of one billion people?
Do you really  believe our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane way of living?

The problem is that we who benefit from the industrial economy – the civilization that must be destroyed in order for things to be created – are the ones that are destroying the planet, and we won’t accept having our benefits taken away from us. Our role as participants in the industrial economy is more important to us than being human, thus having our benefits taken away is like threatening our very existence. This is the downward spiral. This is why we’re doomed.

Lewis Mumford defined civilization’s main features as such: ”the centralization of political power, the separation of classes, the lifetime division of labor, the mechanization of production, the magnification of military power, the economic exploitation of the weak, and the universal introduction of slavery and forced labor for both industrial and military purposes.”
Most dictionaries define civilization as ”a high stage of social and cultural development, an advanced state of human society”.
Obviously, these two definitions don’t synch, and the dictionary definition makes the common mistake in presupposing our present civilization is the best, and that there is only one way to live. Oswald Spengler had a few things to say about that…

Derrick Jensen puts it best in Endgame: ”Ultimately, then, the story of this civilization is the story of the reduction of the world’s tapestry of stories to only one story, the best story, the real story, the most advanced story, the most developed story, the story of the power and the glory that is Western Civilization.”

On another note: ”The civilized notion of ownership is in truth based on force: the aquisition and maintenance of the property of the rich is the central motivating factor impelling nearly all state violence.”
Because when speaking of ownership in a ”civilized” society we mean we have the right to do whatever we want with what we own. We have the right to destroy it, if we please. However, as Spengler also put it, with ownership comes responsibility. If the farmer owns and nurtures his land it becomes his blood and flesh, and he is responsible for the continuation of that land and its health. And he will take that responsibility. We’ve forgotten all about that in this civilized capitalist part of the world, where industrial economy and technology rule.

In Man and Technics (1931), Spengler predicted that coloured people of the Earth will use the very technology of the West to destroy the West. We’ll see how that goes…

music, politics

>Sewer election – This fear is only the beginning

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The car is on fire, and there’s no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt
And we’re on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:

The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies
Picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said, “Kiss me, you’re beautiful –
These are truly the last days”

You grabbed my hand
And we fell into it
Like a daydream
Or a fever

We woke up one morning and fell a little further down
For sure it’s the valley of death

I open up my wallet
And it’s full of blood

This fear is only the beginning
…
There is a sorrow to be desired
To be sorrows desire

What they say is true
It is a dirty blue
This color around you
You’re curled up warm
In your own little corners of Sodom
Did you agree to believe
This fall has no bottom
…
Fear not the faces of brothers

politics

>Votes before swine

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During the period when Liberalism ruled in the Western Civilization, and the State was reduced, theoretically, to the role of “night-watchman”, the very word “politics” changed its fundamental meaning. From having described the power activities of the State, it now described the efforts of private individuals and their organizations to secure positions in the government as a means of livelihood, in other words politics came to mean party-politics. Readers in 2050 will have difficulty in understanding these relationships, for the age of parties will be as forgotten then as the Opium War is now. 
All State organisms were distorted, sick, in crisis, and this introspection was one great symptom of it. Supposedly internal politics was primary.
[…]
The law of every organism allows only two alternatives: either the organism must be true to itself, or it goes down into sickness and death.
Francis Parker Yockey, Imperium – The Philosophy of History and Politics (1948)

Party-politics is a joke. We are voting for the worst people possible to rule our lives. We believe we have a say. Foreign liberal commentators frequently say their countries should ‘emulate Sweden’ in matters of welfare, democracy and freedom. The joke’s always on us.

Still, I believe the alternative to party-politics ain’t yet of real value, and as far as I believe that, I might as well cast my vote before the swine least awful in order to avoid the swine most awful. Sad but true.

More on Francis Parker Yockey.

art, literature, politics

>Scalped

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The American Indian reservations are the last chance for the survival of ancient traditions and ways of life. Yet the states drive Indians off their land (most of the Western Shoshoni people’s land, for example, was long ago confiscated for underground nuclear testing), claiming they can offer them a better life in the cities. However, the Indians will enter an American society where they will be cultureless people, bereft of just about everything.

The American Indians are forced to face a very old dilemma.

At the dawn of the fifteenth century, Spanish conquistadors and priests presented the Indians they encountered with a choice: either give up your religion, culture, land and independence, and swear allegiance to the Catholic Church, or suffer all the damage that the European invaders choose to inflict upon you.

To the conquering Spanish, the Indians were defined as natural slaves. Subhumans. That’s how they wanted to use them. The British and the Americans had little use for the Indians as slaves, so to justify their particular genocide they appealed to Christian sources of wisdom: the Indians were Satan’s helpers, they were murderous wild men of the forest, they were bears, wolves and vermin. They were beyond civil life. Hence, straightforward mass killing of the Indians was the only thing to do. They needed the land, not the humans.

Today is no different. The choice still stands: Surrender all hope of continued cultural integrity and effectively cease to exist as autonomous people and prepare yourself for even worse merciless inequality in our cities, or remain on the reservation and attempt to preserve your culture admist the wreckage of governmentally imposed poverty, hunger, ill health and the endless attempts of the state trying to rob you of your land.

The poverty rate on American Indian reservations in the United States is almost four times the national average. In Pine Ridge in South Dakota (where more than 60 percent of homes are without adequate plumbing, compared with barely 2 percent for the rest of the country) the poverty rate is nearly five times greater. The conditions on many reservations are no different from conditions that rule throughout the Third World.

The suicide rate for young Indian males and females aged 15 to 24 years is around 200 percent above the overall national rate for the same age group, while the rate for death caused by alcohol – another form of suicide – is more than 900 percent higher than the national figure!
American Holocaust.

This is the setting for Scalped, a grim graphic novel created by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guéra. As described on the back of the first volume, Indian Country: ”…a gripping mix of Sopranos-style organized-crime drama and current Native American culture”.

So, life and crime on ”The Rez”, then.

Dashiell Bad Horse ran away from poverty and despair on the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation (could very well be the above mentioned Pine Ridge) some fifteen years ago, and now he’s back, only to find that nothing has changed, except for ”the glimmering new casino and a once-proud people overcome by drugs and organized crime”. It is the eve of the opening of the casino. Welcome to violence.

It turns out that Dash is an undercover FBI agent, and he ends up infiltrating this web of criminality spun by tribal leader Lincoln Red Crow, a former ”Red Power” activist now turned crime boss and the most hated man on the rez, who before he ventured into the heart of darkness was the compatriate of Dash’s mother, Gina. How’s that for a complex and totally unruly sentence? Well, that’s how I felt about this multi-layered, uncomfortable and deeply gritty story in the first place. Unruly. At times I found it hard figuring out who was who, kind of like when I read Blood Meridian the first time. But it was worth the effort of hanging on.

Scalped has its fair share of people holding on to their many secrets, almost Twin Peaks-like, and as the back story is slowly being revealed I was deeply impressed. This is so much more than fights, trashy sex, Indian pride, split families, domestic abuse, mindless violence, scalpings, shootings, revenge, drugs, prostitution, racism, lies, sorrows, drinking and gambling. Much more. The hero and the villain are as crappy and dirty as the world they live in. Here is no peace. Only the lust for vengeance, flesh, profanity and power.

I cannot agree with the Sopranos comparison, though. Aaaron has stated he had The Wire in mind when creating Scalped, and that’s more like it. Like a mixture of Oz and The Wire, maybe. Deadwood? I haven’t even seen that series yet, so throw in some Frozen River and  Gomorrah, and that should do it for most of you.

art, literature, tv

>Life – A continuing story of survival horror

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The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman is that famous graphic novel currently being adapted for the screen as a TV series produced by the same channel that gave us Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It’s directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), so I’m definitely psyched. The first shots look very promising.

But at first, I wasn’t that impressed with the novel. It isn’t original at all; it’s that same old story of one dude waking up all alone in a hospital creeping with zombies, finding his way to a camp of survivors, etc, etc… Very standard. And man, I never thought I’d enjoy a soap opera! Because that’s exactly what it is.

Kirkman states how he loves zombie movies, but hates their open endings. He always wanted to know where the characters went next, after the credits roll. That’s why – at this point, at least – the series is ongoing, pretty much stumbling on without an end. You might think it’ll get boring and repetitive, but having read the first four volumes (issue #1–48) I’m pretty impressed with the way things are going. In short, you’re up for a pretty dazzling post-apocalyptic zombie ritual soap opera.

Essentially, it all boils down to our basic human needs; breathing, eating, sleeping, fucking, exploiting, creating and destroying. It’s about our primal instincts and the reducing of humanity (yes, even among those that are alive – The walking dead are the survivors, in this sense). As the story unfolds and we get to know the characters, we’re in for some hefty relationship drama. And this is were the focus lies; on the ongoing building and shattering of relationships in times of hardship. This is about the people, not the monsters.

As this is pretty far from deep and rather filled to the brim with the most obvious cliches, I still like it. If I wanted deeper stuff, I’d probably go for Y – The Last Man instead. This is Zombie Lit,  and with that you also get the old fashioned sexist idiocy (which seems to be the very essence of the Lit genre…).  Compared to the complexity of Watchmen, for example, this reads more like Tom and Jerry. But as long as you know what to expect, I think it’s ok.

Art by Tony Moore

As for the art, we get some truly powerful, beautifully detailed illustrations of the most vicious gore. However, the art is far from consistent, which is a bit annoying. At times, it’s just splendid, like the larger panorama-like strips. But every now and then, I get the feeling the artist has been in a hurry. Also, there’s an artist change after the first six issues which makes it even more irritating. However, once you get past this moment of vexation, it’s pretty well executed. I’d like more of the details, though, like Glenn wearing Swollen Members- and Hieroglyphics shirts. Tony Moore, who did the first six issues and the cover art up until issue #24, is more into details, while Charlie Adlard, Moore’s successor, works in a more simplistic way. I like them both, though, even though I’d love to have every single strip as detailed as the cover below:

Cover art by Tony Moore

Cover art by Charlie Adlard

Yes, there’s a huge difference between Moore and Adlard, but as the series went on I kind of got to like Adlard’s stuff more and more. I find Adlard’s art to be a lot darker and straight to the point, even though Moore pays more attention to details. Dark is good.

literature, philosophy, religion

>The meaning of the curse

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Cut off from the world, having broken with all his friends, he read me – with an almost indespensible Russian accent, given the situation – the beginning of the Book of Books. Reaching the moment where Adam gets himself expelled from paradise, he fell silent, dreamily staring into the distance while I thought to myself, more or less distinctly, that after millenia of false hopes, humanity, furious at having cheated, would finally receive the meaning of the curse and thereby make itself worthy of its first ancestor.

A flame traverses the blood.
To go over to the other side, circumventing death…

To withdraw indefinitely into oneself, like God after the six days.
Let us imitate Him, on this point at least.

Between Genesis and Apocalypse imposture reigns.
It is important to know this, for once assimilated, such dizzying evidence renders all formulas for wisdom superfluous.

Since our defects are not surface accidents but the very basis of our nature,
we cannot correct them without deforming that nature, without perverting it still more.

If the Hour of Disappointment were to sound for everyone at the same time,
we should see an entirely new version, either of paradise or of hell.

No fate to which I could have adjusted myself.
I was made to exist before my birth and after my death, not during my very existence.

I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species.
But the gods have been against me.

philosophy

>The Falsification of Man – To What End?

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Civilization is a conspiracy of noise, designed to cover up the uncomfortable silences.

John Zerzan

The ongoing process of the collapse of modern mass society must be welcomed, not resisted. The longer the process, the more we will suffer. Ultimately – and most desirable, in true, basic humanist fashion – the solution to all our problems would be the total extinction of the human race. Unfortunately, that kind of peace of mind will have to wait until one of our beloved leaders decides to push the button.

Until then, what’s important is to rise above, ride the tiger and claim the individual will to power. Black Flag, Julius Evola and Friedrich Nietzsche all rolled into one. And no, the will to power is not the will to dominate. People who preach these misinterpretations are most often people who say Nietzsche was a Nazi, even though they haven’t read one single text by the man. Ignore the ignorants.

We should acknowledge the laws of society and act as loyal citizens, to a certain extent, but since the real revolution starts within (Refused told me that sixteen years ago) we shall strike from the inside, like a samurai having taken advantage of the power of his enemy for so long, patiently awaiting the final blow to be executed with perfection and precision against the  modern dying world. We shall rise from the abyss, out of the dark into the black light by means of occult warfare. Legions arise! To the death!

Well, maybe not that romantic and heroic, but one must be able to dream. Because, seriously, what kind of world awaits our children? They will inherit a culture of high anxiety, fear, stress and depression that constantly borders on a state of panic disorder. This is a world that offers no future, but fails to admit this fact. And all this chaos stems from civilization itself, a civilization that passively accepts its own decline. Hence, modern civilization is worth nothing but death.

Neurosis – To What End

‘Progress’ is not progress, it’s everlasting destruction
Technology is backwards

Born of machine
Worship machine
Slave to machine
Become machine

Modern civilization, a contradiction in terms
In terms of survival

Are we alone?

Man is made to obey thee… Are we nothing but living…
MACHINE

A dead hand, it’s work expresses death
No spirit in it’s skeletal framework
The falsification of Man, to what end?
To what end?

Perverted ingenuity of Man
Fools, we’ve lost our earthly wisdom

Not the way of nature
In a man-made state of disarray