IMPORTANT: Man’s Devolution Across Cycles (2)

Man’s Devolution Across Cycles:
Radical Traditionalism on Anthropogenesis, Part 2

Michael Bell

Julius Evola

The Atlantean Silver Age
Hesiod’s poem continues with a discussion of a second age, “which the Celestials call the Silver years.”[24] In this period, man became subject to sickness and mortality. He no longer lived according to the absolute principles provided by his divine tutors during the Golden Age, and paid the gods themselves “no honors.”[25]
It is with the dawning of this era that the Arctic inhabitants, now a race mixed with divine and human elements, traveled as refugees from their destroyed Urheimat to a southern location somewhere in the Atlantic. There they founded the famed city of Atlantis in mimicry of their original homeland. After establishing themselves, they embarked on a colonizing campaign across the world, passing the “Pillars of Hercules” (the Straits of Gibraltar) and reaching deep into the Mediterranean Sea. There they established their hegemony, holding “sway . . . over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia.”[26] It is reasonable to assume that they also sent voyagers to the Americas, as Atlantis would have lain between them and Europe.
As this new civilization was built before recorded history, it is difficult to ascertain its precise chronology. Plato asserts that Atlantis crumbled 9000 years before his own time, while Guénon, relying once again on Vedic mathematics, says this occurred several thousand years earlier. This would, therefore, place its origins even further back. Regardless, our concern is the racial state of those dwelling within Atlantis.
The Boreal race inhabiting the Arctic was probably quite Nordic in appearance. When they mixed with the gods, however, they spawned “men of monstrous size” according to Hesiod, paralleling the Nephilim of the book of Genesis. Given that modern Nordics are some of the tallest humans, and that they themselves are merely degenerated descendants of something greater, the mythological testimony seems plausible. Thus, the Atlanteans sired from the union of gods and men were likely much taller than today’s tallest people and probably more muscular; they would have been frightfully imposing giants. Further credence is given to this idea by the fact that in Numbers, the Hebrews refer to the Anakim as “Nephilim” due to their immense stature, which made the Hebrews feel like “grasshoppers.”
These giants were not the norm, however. Plato speaks of them becoming “diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture,” suggesting that unmixed Boreal humans also lived within Atlantean borders. This was also the cause of Atlantis’s inevitable downfall, much like that of Hyperborea. After several generations of unchecked miscegenation with their human subjects, the Atlantean giants forfeited their angelic constitution and “grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts.”[27] When this happened, the cosmic balance was once again disrupted. Evidence from the myths, sometimes suggestive and other times affirmative, leads us to believe that a massive earthquake occurred, causing Atlantis, the seat of the Silver Age, to sink beneath the Atlantic. The Mesopotamian story of the deluge that submerged the first cult-centers, linked to the Biblical flood that Noah overcame, is an example.[28]
With the Atlantean admixture with humans came a race almost entirely sapped of divinity. They were the direct ancestors of modern Northern Europeans (proto-Nordics), retaining the fair complexion and keen intellect but losing their titanic build and strength. Forced to flee their sinking kingdom, these people migrated in an East-West trajectory, bringing significant numbers into the Americas and Europe.
There is some physical and genetic evidence to substantiate this claim.
Firstly, there is the link between the 18,000 year old Solutrean weapon culture of France and the 13,500 year old American weapon culture of Clovis, New Mexico. Archaeologists Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford concluded in 2004 that there was a striking similarity between the manufacturing methods of each culture, particularly because they both used a very difficult and rare technique called overshot flaking.[29] They also noted that a weapon culture discovered in Virginia, dating to 16,000 years ago, appeared to be a “technological midpoint between the French Solutrean style and the Clovis points.”[30]
Our second piece of evidence is genetic. Scientists have found that among the genes of Native American populations, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of haplogroups A through D, which are common in Asia, predominates. However, it has been found that a significant number of Native Americans in the Eastern United States possess mtDNA from haplogroup X, which is only also found in Western European populations and in some parts of Mongolia. One might argue that the presence of this mtDNA in Mongolia debunks the argument that Whites settled North America first, but this simply is not so when combined with all the other evidence provided here. Significantly, the mtDNA of pre-Columbian Native American skeletons has been studied, revealing that X was present in that race’s genes before the conquistadores arrived.[31]
Thirdly, we have the controversial Kennewick Man corpse. This 9300 year old skeleton, unearthed in Washington State in 1996, was discovered by anthropologist James Chatters to be of Caucasoid origin. In a clay reconstruction the face even ended up resembling that of British actor, Patrick Stewart.[32]
These bits of evidence indicate that a race of people predating the Mongoloid Native Americans split up and branched out into Europe and America from the Atlantic. They carried with them the same genes and tool-making methods, which they adapted to the available resources. An alternative possibility would be that this Upper Paleolithic race migrated first into Europe, with a group then splitting off and migrating eastward to America.

The Children from the Earth
As our Hyperborean ancestors ventured across the globe, first to the Atlantic and then in an East-West trajectory, they encountered preexisting societies in the lands they traversed. As the Golden and Silver Ages took place tens of thousands of years ago, these indigenous peoples were likely from the countless breeds of hominids, including Neanderthalensis and Soloensis. Whatever stock of proto-human they were, our ancestors characterized them as either chthonic, Earth-spawned beings or creatures originating from the chaotic waters. In most cases, their interaction resulted in conflict, but in others the two coexisted and even intermixed. These events have been vividly preserved in the various myths of Hyperborean origin: the epic struggle between the Tuatha da Danaan and the Fomors (people “from the water”); the battles between the Olympians and the various monsters spawned by Gaia (Earth); the vitriolic relationship between the Aesir (the Nordic sky gods) and the Vanir (trolls, giants, and other monsters); even the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf recaptures this theme in the fight between the hero and Grendel, a humanoid demon that lives beneath a lake.
Wherever the newcomers settled down and mixed with the natives, new races were spawned representing further bastardizations of the semi-divine Arctic prototype. Thus our giant, proto-Nordic race ramified into various hybrid breeds, each differing in appearance and attributes depending upon the areas they settled in, the stocks with which they mixed, and just how far they allowed this miscegenation to continue. From these mixed unions sprung the various Mongoloid, Semitic, Australoid, and Negroid races, with the latter two probably representing the farthest debasement from the original Hyperborean phenotype. In instances where mixing was less pronounced, or where adaptation to the environment and other factors had their effect, the various white races were generated (i.e. Nordics, Mediterraneans, Alpines, etc.).
Conclusions
In summary, anthropogenesis was a process of devolution, not evolution. Sixty-five thousand years ago, a race of gods described as “Golden” lived harmoniously with a race of advanced early humans, characterized by fair skin, fair hair, and light eyes, in a joyous, orderly Golden Age somewhere in the Arctic. At some point, the two races intermixed and bred giant demigods. As the Arctic seat froze over in one of the Ice Ages, these demigods led the remaining human survivors south into the Atlantic, with some remaining in different lands along the way. Those who did so, encountered autochthonous races with whom they ultimately mixed, debasing their divine nature and giving rise to a new, Silver Age that corresponded to the Atlantean civilization vividly described by Plato and remembered by many traditions as a “Western” land. It sent explorers out across the world from the Americas to the Far East. Thousands of years later this second super-civilization floundered due to continued mixing between the demigods and their human companions, generating the Upper Paleolithic proto-Nordic race.
With the sinking of Atlantis, these beings, now human in nature but still retaining a divine spark, migrated in an East-West trajectory. On this second great exodus, corresponding to a Bronze Age, some intermarried with indigenous peoples and further debased their line while others maintained their purity. The latter would later erect the most revered civilizations and empires of recorded history, such as Sumeria, Vedic India, Egypt, Hellas, Rome, China, and much later, the feudal regimes of Western Europe. The mixed peoples would be remembered as the Pelasgians, Minoans, Etruscans, Hebrews, Arameans, Iberians, and all other chthonic ethnicities that were subdued and restricted to a plebeian caste. Unfortunately, the vast empires noted above served as little more than dim reflections of the original Hyperborean civilization, precluded from fulfilling their true potential by the prevailing metaphysical conditions of the age in which they flourished.
We have now entered into the terminal phase of the Dark Age, and the type of humanity that is to inherit the succeeding Mahayuga remains to be seen; however, if the races of the world continue down the path of profligate inter-mixing, that divine spark, which drove the white peoples of the world to erect history’s grandest civilizations, and is now harbored by so few, will be completely extinguished. Humanity will then be forced to pass the torch of greatness to a succeeding species.
Part 2 of 2
_____________________________________________________________________
[24] Hesiod, Works and Days, 1.175.
[25] Hesiod, Works and Days, 1.189.
[26] Plato, Timaeus, 25.
[27] Plato, Critias, 120.
[28] “A Sumerian Myth: The Deluge,” trans. S. N. Kramer, The Ancient Near East, ed. James Pritchard, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 29.
[29] Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford, “The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Paleolithic route to the New World,” World Archaeology 36 (2004): 465.
[30] “Stone Age Columbus-programme summary,” BBC, 21 Nov. 2002. . 1 Sept. 2008.
[31] Maggie Villiger, “Tracing the Genes,” PBS, July 20, 2004, http://www.pbs.org/saf/1406/features/dna.htm.
[32] Timothy Egan, “Old Skull Gets White Looks, Stirring Dispute,” The New York Times, April 2, 1998.
http://www.toqonline.com/2010/04/mans-devolution-across-cycles-2/

IMPORTANT: Man’s Devolution Across Cycles (1)

Man’s Devolution Across Cycles:
Radical Traditionalism on Anthropogenesis, Part 1

Michael Bell

René Guénon in 1925

Concerning the genesis of modern humanity, there are two primary theories that receive credence in anthropological circles. One is the “Out of Africa” hypothesis, which argues that today’s humans are the evolved descendants of a primitive race of hominids that, 70,000 years ago, departed its homeland in Africa and spread across the globe. Upon entering Asia and Europe, these archaic humans displaced the indigenous Neanderthals through violent conflict and higher birthrates. They then adapted to their environments and gradually morphed into today’s human races through a process called localized evolution.
The other theory is “Divergent Evolution,” which posits that the various races of mankind were spawned out of continuous admixtures between the different proto-humans (Homo-erectus, Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, etc.) many millennia ago. The countless hybrid amalgams then underwent localized evolution like the single ancestor of the “Out of Africa” process.
While these hypotheses are considered to be at loggerheads, they are united by one key concept: the idea of progress. While each gives a different origin to mankind, both proceed from the assumption that as time goes on, mankind has become better. Although evolutionary theory does not imply that superior adaptations are also superior in terms of intelligence or beauty, this notion is particularly hard to shake with regard to human evolution.
Radical Traditionalism rejects the modernist assumption of progressive human evolution, regarding it as the exact opposite of how the universe functions. For Traditionalism, all things begin at their zenith and gradually degenerate, through a series of stages, into mere shadows of their former glory, a pattern no less true of human beings. The purpose of this essay is to explain how this rule has applied to mankind, who has not risen to mastery of the world from the lowly origins of some apelike ancestor, but rather has fallen from godhood into his current, all-too-human condition.
To do so, it will first be necessary to describe the Radical Traditionalist understanding of history. Like all tenets of Traditionalism, this conception of history is held to be a revealed truth passed down through a chain of initiation. What recommends the Traditionalist outlook to the non-initiate is its coherence and explanatory power. In the following essay, I show that Traditionalism explains archaeological and historical records and harmonizes with ancient myths as well. The modern empiricist will likely disregard such myths as the fancies of primitive imaginations, but that begs the question, for it is just another version of the progress thesis that Traditionalism rejects.
Cyclical History
Radical Traditionalism shares the same view of human history as our ancient forerunners from nearly every corner of the globe. As opposed to the linear model of history—whether ruled by an overriding purpose of by mere chance—the ancients accepted a cyclical model. This is evident in the texts of virtually every civilized race. The Hindus traced man’s descent across four ages or yugas, from the age of Truth (Satya Yuga) to the Dark Age (Kali Yuga), with the series comprising a single Great Age (Mahayuga). The Hellenic Hesiod, in his Works and Days, described the procession from a Golden Age to Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, which corresponds to the Persian rendition of the cycles. The Old Testament reveals that the Semitic peoples also shared this cyclical understanding. In a dream experienced by the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar, there stood a statue with a head made of gold, a chest and arms of silver, thighs of bronze, and legs and feet made of iron and clay, all of which eventually crumbled upon being struck by a stone.[1] The list can go on, with discussions of peoples from the Aztecs to the Japanese, but the examples provided are sufficient to reveal the universality of this cyclical concept.
The ancients also agreed that with each successive age, man becomes more and more distant from a primordial state of perfection. In the Golden Age, man lived in harmony with divine beings and according to absolute, transcendent principles that brought happiness, wholeness, and near immortality to individuals while it brought order and prosperity to collective life. With the ushering in of the Silver Age came a fall from this state of grace and the establishment of an imperfect existence, where those old principles were abandoned, the gods lost much of their divine nature, and man took a step away from cosmic harmony toward chaos. For the purposes of this essay, we shall elaborate on the Golden and Silver Ages, for it was in these prehistoric periods that humanity underwent processes that bestowed our multitude of contemporary mental and physical forms upon us.
The Atlantean Silver Age
The Golden Age was a period of perfection on all levels. Human life was directly guided by the gods themselves and therefore orderly, plentiful, and enjoyable. Though the Golden Age was long ago and its location long since lost, its memory is kept alive by the mythical traditions of nearly every people on the planet. Hesiod, writing in the eighth century B.C., describes this “Age of Gold” thusly:

Men spent a Life like Gods in Saturn’s Reign,
Nor felt their Mind a Care, nor Body Pain;The fields, as yet untill’d, their Fruits afford,
And fill a sumptuous, and enevy’d, Board.
From Labour free they all Delights enjoy,
Nor could the Ills of Time and Peace destroy;
They dy, or rather seem to dy, they seem
From hence transporting in a pleasing Dream.
Thus, crown’d with Happyness their ev’ry Day,
Serer, and joyful, pass’d their Lives away.[2]

Hesiod is one of few writers to directly mention the Golden Age and describe its qualities. Using his work as a reference point, however, the scholar can detect allusions to the same period in other ancient texts. For example, in Book 6 of the Mahabharata, the author discusses Mount Meru, “made of gold,” where the “measure of human life is 10,000 years” and “men are all of a golden complexion . . . [and] without sickness, without sorrow, and always cheerful.”[3] Outside the Aryan tradition, the Book of Lieh-Tzu (fourth century B.C.) describes what appear to be the inhabitants of the Golden Age:

All were equally untouched by the emotions of love and sympathy, of jealousy and fear. Water had no power to drown them, nor fire to burn; cuts and blows caused them neither injury nor pain, scratching or tickling could not make them itch. They bestrode the air as though treading on solid earth; they were cradled in space as though resting in a bed. Clouds and mist obstructed not their vision, thunder-peals could not stun their ears, physical beauty disturbed not their hearts, mountains and valleys hindered not their steps. They moved about like gods.[4]

Finally, we have in the Semitic memory the Garden of Eden, where man was first established on Earth at God’s decree. According to the Book of Genesis, those who dwelled there lived for nearly 1000 years in a blissful paradise.[5] The allusions to this pristine setting are numerous, from the Avestic recollection of a distant period in the Airyana Vaego, where man was under the aegis of the creator god Ahura Mazda himself, to the Buddhist remembrance of Shambhala, roughly translated “land of peace” or “tranquility.”
In tracing anthropogenesis, it is crucial to establish the physical location of this primordial paradise. Unfortunately, no material archaeological evidence lends any insight into this question. We are thus forced to rely solely on the mythological memories of our ancestors. Among the Greeks, this land “beyond the pole” where neither “pestilence nor wasting eld approach” the inhabitants was referred to as Hyperborea, meaning “beyond the north wind.”[6]
In his book Arctic Home in the Vedas, the Hindu nationalist and scholar Bal Gangadhar Tilak, writing in the early twentieth century, presents a vast array of clues from Vedic and Avestic literature to argue that the primordial paradise was located in the Arctic. Tilak explains that if one were stationed at the North Pole, the sky above would appear to be rotating around one “from left to right, somewhat like the motion of a hat or umbrella turned over one’s head.”[7] He also explains that one would see the sun continuously in the sky for roughly six months, followed by a period of dusk, night, and dawn of two months each. Thus for the Arctic inhabitant, a full year would appear to unfold as a single day.
With these astral phenomena in mind, Tilak proceeds to pinpoint allusions to them in the Aryan texts. For example, in the Mahabharata, Mount Meru is discussed in one passage as a place where the “sun and the moon go round from left to right every day and so do all the stars” and “The day and the night are together equal to a year to the residents of the place.”[8] He supports this with a selection from the post-Vedic Laws of Manu, which says “A year (human) is a day and a night of the Gods; thus are the two divided, the northern passage of the sun is the day and the southern the night.”[9] Tilak corroborates this evidence with clues from Persian tradition. From the Avesta we have reference to an “enclosure” in the Airyana Vaejo in which “the stars, the moon, and the sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems only as a day.”[10]
The present conditions in the Arctic make it uninhabitable. According to Tilak, however, modern scientists have conceded that at one time in distant prehistory, perhaps in pre-Glacial times, the region was hospitable, fertile, and filled with life. Among these scientists is the geologist James Geikie, who in 1893 argued that “during the Inter-Glacial period the climate was characterized by clement winters and cool summers so that the tropical plants and animals, like elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses, ranged over the whole of the Arctic region, and in spite of numerous fierce carnivora, the Paleolithic man had no unpleasant habitation there.”[11] Joscelyn Godwin confirms that such conditions were indeed possible when, as “numerous authorities” claim, “the earth was not tilted, but spun perfectly upright with . . . its axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the sun,” which was the case in “primordial times.”[12]
Since the Arctic Golden Age took place many eons before recorded history, assessing its actual place in time is troublesome. Using Hindu calculations, Traditionalist René Guénon concluded that this Golden Age took place nearly 65,000 years ago.[13] We must prefer this number over Tilak’s hypothesized 12,000 years, as the latter would place the subsequent Silver Age far too near recorded history to be possible, especially considering that the fourth, Dark Age, “is said” to have begun only 6000 years ago.[14] In addition, it would be implausible to place man’s origins only 12,000 years ago, as the devolutionary processes that reduced him to his modern form could not have fully unfolded within that short span.
Eventually, the Arctic seat and its Golden Age met a catastrophic end for a number of reasons, both physical and metaphysical. In his magnum opus, Revolt Against the Modern World, Julius Evola argues that the Earth’s axis shifted positions slightly, ushering in a cataclysmic climate change.[15] As a result, the Polar Regions became inhospitable to most life forms. In ancient texts one finds numerous references to this tilting of the axis. The Taoist tradition recalls when the “pillar which connects Heaven and earth” was “snapped” (the axis is essentially an invisible pillar that unites the sky with Earth), explaining “why Heaven dips downwards to the north-west, so that sun, moon and stars travel towards that quarter.”[16] The Hebrew story of the crumbling of the Tower of Babel, which connected Heaven to Earth, is another example. The Avesta explains the onset of the climate change in a dialog between the creator god and his disciple, king Yima: “And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima, saying: ‘O fair Yima, son of Vîvanghat! Upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall make snow-flakes fall thick.”[17] As this event would have occurred tens of thousands of years ago, it likely coincides with the beginning of one of the various Ice Ages.
One more event, metaphysical in nature, is explained to us by the Old Testament. It tells of how the “sons of God” mated with the “daughters of man” and spawned a race of mighty giants, whose evil behavior, driven by the appetites of the flesh, made God unleash elemental forces against them.[18] These sons are likely parallels to the “celestial gods” who dwelled in Airyana Vaego, as well as the other gods and demigods that the ancient texts say lived in this primordial paradise. From the clues above, we can paint the following picture regarding the end of the Golden Age. Human beings lived harmoniously with divine beings in the Arctic paradise until the two entered sexual unions that produced powerful, semi-divine half-breeds. This action caused such a rupture in the cosmic balance of the universe that the Earth’s axis shifted, bringing on the Ice Age that turned the paradise into a cold wasteland.
Following the destruction of Airyana Vaego/Mount Meru/Eden/ Hyperborea, the semi-divine survivors were forced to migrate southwards. In their exodus they retained the memory of their Polar homeland, evinced by polar symbols such as the swastika (a bent cross revolving about a fixed point) and the axial World Tree, which traditionally links Midgard (Earth) with the realms above. Some settled in areas of North America and Northern Europe, but the majority regrouped in an Atlantic location to reconstitute their civilization.
If we are to make any conjectures about the race of our Hyperboreans, we must look to those people who carried with them the memory of the primordial home. By Hyperboreans, I mean the Arctic race of “men” who lived among the gods. Discerning the features of the latter is impossible, as they are not bound by the limitations of material existence; they could have been anthropomorphic, ethereal, or capable of alternating between the two. Our only clue is that they were “Golden,” which may be an allusion to vibrant blondness.[19]
In all of the civilizations discussed above, as well as in others, our concern would be with the upper castes, namely the priests and the military aristocracy, who preserved the memories of Hyperborea. Among the Aryan peoples of Europe, this task is simpler due to the abundance of physical evidence available, namely statues, frescoes, engravings, and physical remains. The ancestors of classical Greece and Rome, Germania, and Celtia, who brought with them the worship of Zeus, Saturn, Tuisto, and Dana, were evidently of a tall, robust, fair-haired, and fair-skinned Nordic stock. The fourth century A.D. physician, Adamantios, gives us a picture of the early Hellenes, claiming that “Wherever the Hellenic and Ionic race has been kept pure, we see proper tall men of fairly broad and straight build, neatly made, of fairly light skin and blond; the flesh is rather firm, the limbs straight, the extremities well made.”[20]
As we push further east, the evidence becomes less plentiful but nonetheless revealing. The Brahmins who carried to India the oldest extant accounts of the Golden Age in Mount Meru were of that same Nordic race. If one juxtaposes a modern Brahmin or Kshatriya with a member of the lower castes, it often appears that the former has something quite different “in his woodpile.” He would tend to be taller and fairer in complexion and occasionally possess blue or green eyes and, more rarely still, fair hair. Lower caste individuals generally tend to be shorter and darker, and although many have fine Caucasoid features, others display an Australoid phenotype. Kaiyata, writing in the second century B.C., affirms that White Brahmins once “flourished in a previous cycle of existence” but that their “descendants are rarely met with even now.”[21] The sixth century B.C. Kshatriya noble, Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), is described in the Pali Canon as having abhi nila netto, or “very blue eyes,” a typical Nordic trait.
In the Far East, we have a non-Aryan milieu entirely. However, there is ample genetic evidence that tall, fair Whites roamed both Western[22] and Eastern[23] China long before the present-day Mongoloids. Taken with the racial description of the Buddha, we have enough to surmise a heavy influence upon China’s culture by Nordics or a stalwart white race akin to them. Since Buddhism influenced the development of Japanese religious culture, the same rule applies to Japan.
The list can go on, but we have already given sufficient proof that the bearers of the oldest and clearest recollections of Hyperborea were tall, fair, blue-eyed, and red or blonde-haired whites. It would thus be fair to conclude that the Hyperboreans, from whom they claim descent, were likely of a proto-Nordic race.
Part 1 of 2

[1] Dan. 2:35.
[2] Hesiod, Works and Days, 1.154–63.
[3] Mahabharata, 6.1.6.
[4] Lieh-Tzu, The Book of Lieh-Tzu, trans. Lionel Giles (1912), 36.
[5] Gen. 5:5.
[6] Pindar, Pythian Odes, 10.29, 10.41.
[7] Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Arctic Home in the Vedas (Poona City, India: 1903), 43.
[8] Mahabharata, 3.7.163. Quoted in Tilak, 64.
[9] The Laws of Manu, 1.67. Quoted in Tilak, 63.
[10] Vendidad, 2.40. Quoted in Tilak, 350.
[11] James Geikie, Fragments of Earth Lore: Sketches and Addresses, Geological and Geographical (1893), 266. Quoted in Tilak, 22–23.
[12] Joscelyn Godwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival (Kempton: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996), 13.
[13] René Guénon, Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 24.
[14] René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, trans. Marco Pallis (Hillsdale: Sophia Perennis, 2001), 7.
[15] Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International, 1995), 189.
[16] Lieh-Tzu, 79.
[17] Vendidad, 2.22.
[18] Gen. 6: 2–7.
[19] Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, 185. In his chapter “The Golden Age,” Evola contends that gold symbolizes the gods’ divine nature, which is “incorruptible, solar, luminous, and bright.” I see no reason, however, to reject the possibility that it could be a reference to something phenotypical.
[20] Hans F. K. Gunther, The Racial Elements of European History, trans. G. C. Wheeler (London: Methuen, 1927), 157.
[21] R. P. Chanda, The Indo-Aryan Races: A Study of the Origin of Indo-Aryan People and Institutions, Part I (Rajshahi: Varendra Research Society, 1916), 24.
[22] “Genetic Testing Reveals Awkward Truth About Xinjians’s Famous Mummies,” Khaleej Times Online, April 19, 2005.
[23] Li Wang et al, “Genetic Structure of a 2500-Year-Old Human Population in China and Its Spatiotemporal Changes,” Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17 (2000): 1396–1400.
http://www.toqonline.com/2010/04/mans-devolution-across-cycles-1/

IMPORTANT:When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

May 31, 2010

When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

By Tom Hoffman

The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men. The virtues of manhood which had been extolled and celebrated throughout the middle ages right up to the 1950s have been completely expunged from academia and pop culture. The baby boom generation was the last to be taught the values of rugged individualism, risk-taking, courage, bravery, loyalty, and reverence for tradition. John Wayne epitomized the rugged individual who was committed to fighting "the bad guy," but he was only one of a whole host of competing figures cut out of the same cloth. What happened?

Today, the Boy Scouts are fighting the last battle in a lost cause. Any man who stands up to the "women's movement" is completely marginalized as a sexist and homophobe. These names have become just as stigmatizing as "racist" used to be. It is no wonder that women now are the majority of college graduates and are increasing their role in every institution from private enterprise to public service, including the military. Is this a healthy trend? The answer is clearly "no."

Edward Gibbon chronicles the increasing femininity of the Roman Empire in his six-volume work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He catalogues the progressive decadence that rendered the once-proud republic into spoils for barbarian hordes. The consuls in the early republic, who were warrior-generals adhering to a strict code of honor, gradually gave way to the backroom emperors who were no more than brazen criminals and thugs. It is the same script in all noble human enterprise: The fabric which bred success is torn apart by the complacency of the successful. When warfare is demonized as violence and negotiation is raised to an art, the end is near. Today, we are there.

Today's politics reminds me of the make-believe kingdom of Queen Herzeloyde. She was the mother of Parzival, the hero of Wolfram von Eschenbach's 12^th-century epic poem Parzival. This masterwork is widely touted as a literary cornerstone of Western civilization. It not only extolled the virtues of knighthood and chivalry, but it also exhorted men to overcome all obstacles on the path to individual greatness.

Parzival's mother was married to a knightly king whose military campaigns against worldly evil kept him away from his kingdom for years on end. Herzeloyde is heartbroken to hear of her husband's death and vows to keep her son sheltered from the knightly world. She sets up a royal court in the wilderness with a deadly sanction against anyone who would allow her son to come in contact with a knight. The boy grows up oblivious of the outside world until he confronts two knights in shining armor on horseback. His mother is distraught to discover that there will be no discouraging her son's ambition to become a knight. She goes so far as to dress her son as a fool upon his setting out upon his adventure in hopes that he will be humiliated and return to her.

Academia, with the help of the media, has labeled all reference to manly virtue as patriarchal, sexist, and homophobic. Womanly virtue, on the other hand, is extolled. Caring, compassion, sensitivity, and understanding are virtues meant to blur the distinction between good and evil and drown out the call of manly conscience to "do the right thing." Like a mother who refuses to see the evil in her son, the feminist professors cast all moral standards as relative and subjective. 

Exit the cowboy and enter the mama's boy. Queen Herzeloyde would have no problem raising young Parzival in today's schools, as devoid of examples of manly virtue and rugged individualism as they are. All reference to the service of a higher calling -- to God and country -- has been replaced by the call to community service with the emphasis on care and compassion for the downtrodden.

We now have a would-be queen named Pelosi who sits atop a vast bureaucracy dedicated to rooting out all reference to God and a higher calling while making sure that any reference to manly virtue, rugged individualism, and decency is stigmatized as "hate speech." No nation has ever demonized manhood to its own reward. A nation that renounces violence, no matter how just the cause, signs its own death certificate -- and for a violent death at that.

Radical Traditionalist Aesthetics

Friday, 30 April 2010

Wanted: Something to Dream

Radical Traditionalist Aesthetics

By Alex Kurtagic

I have written elsewhere about the need for pro-White campaigners to provide their target audience with better incentives than the apocalyptic warnings about economic collapse, race wars, and extinction that have constituted the traditional fare of the White Nationalist movement. I have argued that the reason campaigners have failed to make real political progress, in spite of having logical arguments, a moral case, and massive supporting data, is that, in the effort to persuade and inspire action, key aspects of human psychology have been ignored. Even though he is typically steeped in sociobiology, the White advocate has generally relied on rational persuasion to advance the pro-White agenda, neglecting well-known pre-rational motivators, such as the need for status and self-esteem (which he knows well enough), and the role of emotion (which he often deplores). We often hear about confronting the boobs with "the facts," even though it has been amply demonstrated that, on their own, facts make no political difference.

In response to this, I have stressed the importance of style and status as pre-rational campaigning tools. And in my most recent article (ΤΟ ΕΧΟΜΕ ΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΕΙ 'What’s in It for Me?') I have also stressed the need to move away from the negativity, the pessimism, the paranoia, the emotional masochism, and the obsessive conspiratology that permeates much of the White advocate's discourse, in favor of a friendlier, more positive presentation. Overall, my message over the past year has been that White advocates need to become pleasant and sought-after company, look attractive, and create a parallel economy and status system so that they can both impress and have, here and now, something to offer the White folk whose attention are seeking to gain.

I deem these essential ingredients to a successful strategy, because the evidence shows that ordinary White folk, no matter what the state of the economy or the politically correct indignities they are asked to endure, continue to see White advocates as scary, angry, boring, stupid, impoverished, and old, full of complaints but without solutions, full of analysis but unable to tell them exactly how signing up to the White advocates' program would improve their lives. Ordinary White folk continue to entertain the misconception -- perhaps partly justified, and in any event gleefully perpetuated by the Left -- that were a pro-White faction to achieve political victory, it would inevitably create a fascist dystopia like the ones commonly seen in Hollywood films. This deterrent is further reinforced by the fact that White advocacy's "perks" often consist of ostracism, lost livelihood, prison sentences, and even death. Ignorance of "what is really going on" might be, for most, a small price to pay when there is no immediate threat and when pretending that everything will be fine means retaining one's social status, peace and quiet, and affluent lifestyle.

How to change?

Evidently, I am not suggesting that pro-White campaigners ought to change their message, compromise, or sell out. I am simply saying that they need to change how that message is delivered; that they need to reformulate the pro-White discourse so that it achieves its political aims rather remain a method of personal catharsis.

The first step towards achieving this is understanding the White advocate's role in contemporary society. Presently, the White advocate is the gentleman who arrives at a party wanting to switch on the bright lights and turn off the music, to tell everyone to sober up and put out their cigarettes, to scold them for wasting food and electricity, and to inform them that the lawn needs mowing, the floors need scrubbing, the drains need clearing, the overdraft needs paying, the and garbage needs taking out. And when the lung cancer patient is dying, the White advocate is the gentleman who tells him, "See? I told you so! I told you smoking is bad for you, but no, you wouldn't listen! Now you've got what you deserved! And if you think you have it bad now, it will only get worse!"

This is hardly a recipe for popularity, and it is no surprise, therefore, that so many choose to ignore this gentleman; that they applaud when the Leftist host says, "Oh... Let's get him out. He's a psycho"; and even help him loose the guard dogs against the party pooper, even though the latter is looking after many of the partygoer's best interests.

Yet, the task is not as difficult as my analogy makes it seem.

This is not just because some parties are dreadful, but also because its ideological matrix confers upon the radical traditionalist Right a number of discursive advantages, in the same measure that the Leftist's own ideological matrix saddles him with a number of discursive disadvantages. In other words, the radical traditionalist Right tends to be uniquely proficient in the areas where the Left cannot be -- because of the Leftist system of belief -- an adequate match without superhuman effort and without Leftists twisting themselves into highly artificial convolutions. Identifying the areas of advantage is the second step.

Where does the radical traditionalist Right's mindset enjoy natural advantages?

One area, in my opinion, is the ability to inspire heroic feelings of superiority, pride, and glory. This is strategically advantageous, because humans like to think that they are strong, and because they enjoy feeling that they are part of something powerful; it flatters their vanity, it caters to their need to belong in a manner that enhances their self-esteem. The radical traditionalit Right excels at this for the same reasons that the Left does not even try: the former has a Romantic ethic, aspires to greatness, strives to push forward and upward in an organic and metaphysical sense. This, of course, implies elitism, a hierarchical conception of life. Leftists, by contrast, are egalitarians, so they resent hierarchy because it reminds them of their own mediocrity -- after all, only the mediocre benefit from egalitarianism. Rather than elite, proud, and glorious, Leftists are resentful, envious, and self-hating. Accordingly, their tactics rely on guilt-mongering and on inspiring a sense of grievance; they are champions of the weak and the pathetic. It is difficult to feel inspired by this, let alone be roused into heroic action for abstract principles like "equality." The best they can hope for, therefore, is to inspire feelings of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is unattractive, and people who are self-righteous tend to be preachy and irritating.

For the mystically-inclined, another area of natural advantage is our esoterica, which is linked to the Romantic ethic, which is in turn linked to traditionalist tendencies. Marxists would have never been able to produce a Left-wing analogue to, say, Armanism. Esoteric Marxism? Such a thing, were it ever to be invented, could erupt only out of a right-wing mind. Leftists are rationalists, materialists, anti-traditionalists; they see the world as a machine, without a soul. Whereas our side has thousands of years of rich and deep mythology and tradition, both exoteric and esoteric, to draw from for the elaboration of alternative, meaning-laden narratives, Leftists impoverish themselves by their wholesale jettisoning of the past, of tradition, of metaphysics. If the Left has any use for any of these, it is to subvert it, pervert it, mock it, and uglify it. The Leftist desires to be unmoored in order so that he may be given free rein to indulge his selfish individual appetites and impose his speculative schemes on pliant human guinea pigs. This confers our side with another strategic advantage: firstly, many ordinary folk feel attached to, and reassured by, traditional forms -- they are upset by fundamental change; and, secondly, for many ordinary folk everyday life is tedious and filled with drudgery -- esoterica caters to the human need for fantasy and escape, for something that supersedes the pedestrian reality of the material plane of existence. The Left, being solely concerned with material reality, can only emulate this with sneers, cynicism, and poor taste.

These unique areas of advantage can and ought to be further elucidated. They are also not the only ones.

They are sufficient, however, for us to begin elaborating our own, forward-looking utopian vision. A utopian vision is necessary, because it provides direction, an ideal to aim for; because it unites behind a common purpose, it inspires aspirational sentiments of greatness and glory, and caters to the aforementioned human need for fantasy and escape. A utopian vision is like the advertisement in a marketing campaign. It needs to be forward-looking, because the arrow of time, indeed life, moves inexorably forward: you can kill a baby and make a new one; but you cannot put the baby back in the womb.

Those who doubt the political significance of utopian inspiration ought to remember that while the Left was in opposition, it was as fundamentally critical of the existing system as we are today -- its message was "No, it's not OK and things will have to change radically, and I'm afraid you'll have to give up some of your privileges." On the face of it, this is not a message likely to prove popular with a ruling class or a dominant culture. Yet, at no point did Leftists forget to couch their critique with uplifting, moral language ("dignity," "inalienable rights," "fairness," "social justice," etc.) And neither did they forget to tell their constituents concretely how they would benefit from the Leftist program ("equal pay for equal wok," "universal healthcare," "no child left behind," etc.) The Left was successful because its leadership understood human motivation and it knew how to market its program effectively in a manner that was both consistent with the Leftist system of belief and difficult, for that reason, for the Left's opponents to emulate without looking like hypocrites.

On the basis of the above, I propose that our marketing strategy needs to focus on positive values that come naturally to us and which the Left finds difficult, or impossible, to replicate: quality, greatness, spirituality, heterodoxy, and romanticism. These values need to appear in contrast -- more often than not by implication rather than by accusation -- to the Leftist tendency to produce a world of cheapness, monotony, mean-spiritedness, materialism, and utilitarianism -- all of which are consequences of egalitarianism's race to the bottom, to the lowest common denominator. If we are able to develop a style of presentation, an image, that encapsulates our core values and message in an attractive, uplifting, and forward-looking manner, that captures White people's imagination, that enraptures them with images, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells that hint at what could be; and if we are able, at the same time, to develop economic opportunities (quality goods and services, as opposed to the modern con jobs) and status systems (awards, clubs, etc.) we are likely to make our target audience more receptive to the pro-White arguments and supporting data than it has been so far. The arguments and the data would then be marshaled by our target audience to justify their fantasies, yearnings, and ambition; the enemy's arguments and data would be dismissed, because boring and inconvenient. And access to parallel business opportunities and status systems unencumbered by political correctness would, in turn, inoculate our target audience against its dependency on the anti-White establishment. We would then be offering a carrot, available now, and not just the stick of fear of a cataclysmic future.
Back to my party analogy, we need to be like the gentleman who is throwing the rival party across the street, which is so much more vibrant and impressive in terms of music, food, décor, theme, cache, quality of attendees, and organization -- so much better, in sum, than the one being hosted by the Leftist that the latter's guests eventually desert him. A frivolous analogy, perhaps, but such is the world we live in.

Obviously, I do not regard political activism as a party, or as it being all about fun, style, and presentation -- to be sure, there is no reason why political activism cannot or should not be fun, but seriousness and substance still matter. I do maintain, however, that successfully selling a message involves necessarily making those to whom it is aimed feel good about themselves and their affiliation with the messenger; and that, if our side is to make political progress, this process and the methods, strategies, and tactics it involves needs to be understood and afforded much greater focus than it has enjoyed hitherto.

Some final thoughts. In some of my articles, including this one, I have used the terms "Left" and "Right". I use the Left-Right dichotomy for the sake of expediency. In reality, however, I do not see our mission in terms of a simple political binary, as the situation is far more complicated, indeed superseding the realm of politics (it has been suggested that our crisis is spiritual, for example). But I trust my readers will know what I mean; that they will understand that "Left" does not mean Democrat or Labour any more than "Right" means Republican or Tory - these are all liberal parties, all Leftists in my book. Essentially, "the Left" refers to the enemy: the rationalist materalists who believe in the ideology of equality and progress.
Also, sometimes I come across organizations that claim they exist to defend Western civilization and / or the interests of the White race, without making it obvious how they do this or what they plan to do. They tell us what they believe in and what they are against, and... they ask for money; but the prospective donor is not given in advance any real sense of what his / her money will be used for, let alone whether it will be used effectively. These organizations are not political parties, evidently, because they do not systematically campaign in elections, but... are they lobbyists? Award bodies? Literary agencies? Record labels? Or are they just websites, pumping out information for the benefit of the converted? Thankfully, White advocacy has in recent years been gradually moving away from this model; but, all the same, it needs to be re-stated: a generic organization with a grandiloquent remit is not sufficient. It is better to create narrowly focused organizations (small businesses, clubs, charities) that operate within a specific area, in a specific role, with a clearly circumscribed mission, offering opportunities and real goods and services in the market place. It might be that, looked in isolation, a record label, a battle re-enactment society, or a charity aiming to preserve specific monuments or sites, does not appear crucial in the battle for survival; but they are important in their aggregate, and, because specialized, they are much more likely than a generic organization to achieve tangible objectives within their scope of operation. Remember: focus is important in marketing. Another advantage to this approach is that the organizations need not be overtly political, and, therefore, not make themselves an immediate target for the censors.

In sum, I believe that ultimate success or failure will depend on, among other factors, whether our side is able to recast itself as the energetic forger of tomorrow, rather than simply the embittered critic of today.

Saturday, 08 May 2010 -- http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/virtus/what-happened-to-honor/

What Happened to Honor?

By Jack Donovan

Under discussion: Honor: A History by James Bowman (Encounter Books, 2007)

What happened to honor in the West? And without honor -- or at least an honest understanding of it -- are we capable of facing the challenges of the 21^st Century?

In Honor: A History, Bowman places these questions in a political context, as a clash between the old honor culture of the Islamic world and the anti-honor culture of the modern West. In this sense, his question is similar to the one Mark Steyn asks in America Alone. If Islam has all the attributes of what Osama Bin Laden famously called "a strong horse," will the pampered and polite social democracies of the West be able to survive its galloping onslaught?

This horse race bookends a rare and worthwhile exploration of the concept of honor itself, which is a confusing topic in the contemporary West where honorable ideals have been discredited as anti-modern, and the word "honor" has been reduced to a mere synonym for neutered, universal, non-hierarchical values like "goodness" or "honesty" or "integrity." The bumper sticker banality "honor diversity" renders the word honor a substitute for the verbs "value" or "esteem." While you can certainly follow the dilution of honor's meaning here, this is a world apart from a word once closely connected to glory won in battle. 

Reflexive vs. Cultural Honor

Bowman identifies two kinds of honor: reflexive honor and cultural honor.
Reflexive honor is fairly simple and defensive. If you hit me, and I don't hit you back, you know that you can hit me as often as you like without repercussions. In the most basic sense, a man's honor is his reputation for strength and courage -- his willingness to stand his ground and protect his interests. His interests have long included protecting and corralling the women in his life, and female honor has most often been associated with chastity (or at least the reputation for it).
Cultural Honor is far more complex and variable, because according to Bowman it has to do with "the traditions, stories and habits of thought in a particular society about (among other things) the proper and improper uses of violence." Cultural honor moderates reflexive honor, which has a tendency to get out of hand, and provides an ethical or moral framework for the idea of honor. Chivalry is an example of cultural honor, as are elaborate codes of conduct developed to guide the actions of men who wish to consider themselves honorable. Bowman adds that our modern ideal of sportsmanship or "fair play" is a particularly Victorian flourish of cultural honor.

A key point of Bowman's thesis is that reflexive honor never really goes away -- it's part of human nature -- but has become so buried and almost unrecognizable in the West today that we don't know how to speak about it or deal with it.
A Balance Between the Demands of Honor and Ethics

Reflexive honor, the threat of retaliatory violence, is the gold standard that makes civilization possible. Theiron words of life and death. Don Corleone may as well have been speaking about honor when he told his successor that "Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men." Men who don't understand the basic reality and necessity of reflexive honor, who are careless about honor, ought to be treated like women and children. But reflexive honor can also, as mentioned above, get quickly out of hand and turn into a completely irrational pissing contest. As Sam Sheridan wrote in A Fighter's Heart, "...no one is more sensitive than tough guys."

The Greeks showed some concern for this intrinsic problem of honor, that men who care about honor alone or above all things can do great damage to their communities. The threat of retaliatory violence may make civilization possible, but this physical courage, scrappiness -- thumos -- can also be destructive. It must be tempered by reason and morality. The Roman concept of virtus, for which this column is named, evolved as the empire stabilized and roles became more specialized. Eventually, in a prosperous, ordered and complex society where a majority of men will never see combat, the ideal of manly virtue cannot be limited to martial valor without effectively emasculating the majority of men. Men must still demonstrate a reputation for strength, but to maintain order in a stable community that strength must be abstracted a bit, and guided by rules and common values.

This is one area where Bowman misses an opportunity to explore honor in a cross-cultural fashion. While the Eastern honor culture of Japan is mentioned, there are some powerful parallels in the conflicts between samurai values and the merchant values -- and the transformation of the role of the samurai during theTokugawa shogunate -- that would aid in understanding what happens to martial ideals of honor in times of relative peace and prosperity.

In Bowman's view, Christianity also created some moral conundrums for the honor-obsessed. It has always been difficult for those who believe that a good man should "turn the other cheek" -- in contrast to a more reflexive Roman honor culture -- to reconcile their faith with the valorous demands of martial masculinity. He highlights this using the example of Lancelot, who was considered virtuous by virtue of his strength and battle prowess, but who created a conflict of conscience for all who knew that he was an adulterer. This creates an interesting distinction between public and private honor that, with the help of Christian morality, over time drew the idea of honor inward and personalized it. Public acclaim alone could not make a man truly honorable if he was, in his heart, dishonest, insincere, disloyal or sinful. The Christian ethos doubtlessly had a hand in transforming Western honor from something reflexive to something reflective and personal, though there are shades of the same move inward in non-Christian Japanese texts on honor like the Hagakure.

Honor cultures in the West became increasingly sophisticated, especially in the European upper classes, who cultivated gentlemanliness. However, the martial and reflexive aspects of honor were always simmering just beneath the surface, and the official culture gave vent to them perhaps most notably in the form of gentlemanly dueling. The emergence of the importance of the individual, especially in fiercely democratic and egalitarian America, set the stage for honor's true decline in the West, which in Bowman's view happened during and following World War II.
Honor's Decline and the Post-Honor Society
Bowman blames the decline of Western honor culture on the complimentary convergence of three factors in the early 20^th Century: modern warfare, therapy and feminism.

The mechanized modern warfare of World War I made the combat experience feel less honorable, less "knightly" and more like indiscriminate, anonymous slaughter. Numerous postwar memoirs, plays and films focused on what many of the participants regarded as pointless, horrific violence for its own sake -- or for the sake of the Old honor of the European upper classes. Bowman makes the point that "Anonymity -- literally namelessness -- is of course antithetical to honor, which in its essence means 'name' or 'reputation.'"

Men who emerged were often seen as "survivors" instead of heroes, especially due to the relatively new discipline of psychology. Using the example of Siegfried Sassoon, Bowman shows how the idea that "shell shock" or psychological trauma at the individual level cast a different light on what the honor group and the honor elite would have normally deemed "cowardice."

Suffragettes in World War I were predominantly anti-war and had no interest in fighting wars. As a matter of necessity, women joined public life to support the war effort, and "brought with them something of their traditional role as nurturers and caregivers." This sympathy played into the expansion of psychotherapy; feminism and psychotherapy "tended to reinforce each other."

Modern warfare, therapy and feminism severed much of the West from older, more aristocratic forms of honor after World War I. There were still remnants of the old honor culture in World War II, but war had become more democratic, more about the everyman. The reasons for fighting changed from ideas of national and individual honor to fighting for peace, fighting "a war to end war," and especially in the post-war wrap-up, fighting evil -- fighting a moral war. Old rules were broken; there were increased attacks on civilians, and winners rationalized show trials to enact "victor's justice," as with Nuremburg, rather than respecting the honor of their opponents. Further, the prominent Traditional or quasi-Traditional honor cultures of the Germans, the Japanese and the Italians made World War II, in some sense, seem like a war against old honor culture itself.

The rote denigration and discrediting of those honor cultures following the war continues to inform our own culture and perception of honor on a daily basis. Any attempted revival or sympathetic treatment of Traditional, hierarchical, authoritarian Western cultures of manly honor are almost always automatically and immediately compared to Nazis and fascists. Umberto Eco provides a typically convenient, blanket reduction of many aspects of any Traditional masculine honor ethos to a pathologized "Ur-Fascism" in his 1995 essay "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt." This anti-authoritarianism fueled the tiresomely famous protests and social upheavals of the 1960s and 70s and, filtered through popular culture, continues to fuel youth culture today -- even though "the man" of the 1960s has more or less been replaced by "the assorted persons" on the left who rebelled against him. Youths rebelling against "the man" today are just going through the motions and following the example of their parents and, increasingly, their grandparents. The hierarchical honor culture of "the man" is mere whisper of what it was even a few generations ago; they're rebelling against a ghost.

Bowman also makes the point that honor cultures have been abandoned in part because the wars America has fought have been increasingly "limited" and cynical. He frequently contrasts General Douglas MacArthur's old idea of war -- that no end other than victory was worth the sacrifice of war -- to the post WWII idea of war as a chess game, typified by the Pentagon Papers and obvious in the recent debates over what "victory" even means in Iraq or Afghanistan. Soldiers are unfortunately now more often portrayed as pawns and victims of war than as heroes. As a result of this warranted distrust of authority and the progressive personalization and internalization of the idea of honor following World War I, Bowman notes that the Army has taken to marketing individually centered rationales for enlisting -- like "Army of One" or "Army Strong" -- instead of relying on the call of duty, honor-seeking, or patriotism. The old "white feather" campaigns would never fly in our officially gender-neutral, post-honor society.

All of these aspects of honor's decline considered, it boils down to the loss of the honor group. Bowman points out that "honor depends on the honor group," and it seems that unless you have a group of men who collectively agree to hold certain kinds of behavior up as an aspirational, honorable ideal, honor cannot survive. Traditional Honor is hierarchical; there is an element of competition to it, an element of reputation-building and fame-seeking, a desire to be seen as a Man of Honor that collapses if there is no group to hold the Man of Honor in esteem above others. There seems to be a "sweet spot" in Western honor culture, a balance between the conscience and authenticity of the individual and the demands of the honor culture that has tipped in favor of the individual at the expense of the group. One of the drawbacks of losing the honor group is that a man can rationalize virtually any behavior, his self-perception is subjective and self-serving. Being true to yourself can mean anything, and frequently, it does. The honor group standardizes conduct, it defines virtus, it creates a code to guide a man's internal sense of honor.

(I'll explore the idea of a lost honor group and what it means for men who find themselves attracted to Traditional ideals of honor in a forthcoming essay for Alternative Right. )
Reviving Honor

Bowman presents a program for a revival of honor, but seems unconvinced that such a revival is possible -- especially since the media currently feeds on scandal and dishonor.

First, Bowman writes that we must "revive the warrior spirit," by allowing our politicians and military men to make use of the language of Traditional and group honor. We must be loyal to our own, instead of incessantly prosecuting each other over policy differences. In addition to the phenomenon of every administration these days trying to treat its opponents in the last administration like criminals, I suspect Bowman would agree that we need to stop demonizing and prosecuting our troops every time they fail to hug an enemy combatant. He also believes we should culturally encourage honorable and heroic behavior on the part of citizens, giving the heroes of United Airlines Flight 93 as an example. Another way to do this would be to expand on the idea ofGood Samaritan Laws, and defend or expand ideas like Castle Doctrine. In military matters, but perhaps even more so in civilian society, our post-honor society is paralyzed by litigiousness and the perception that potential acts of heroism will often result in lawsuits or even jail time for the hero. We've created a society where intervening on another's behalf will more than likely be punished.

Bowman recognizes the need for "a new inequality" -- a revival of virtue over cynicism.

Honor can be made compatible with a great many seemingly antithetical ideas, but it can never be compatible with any serious degree of egalitarianism. By its very nature it separates people into unequal categories of higher and lower, good and less good, honorable and less honorable-and, yes, dishonorable too.

He also says that politicians would have to demand some sort of respect and stop pandering by trying to be nice and accessible-they would have to be more manly and noble. The problem of course is that this is unworkable in a democracy, especially one that runs on a 24-hour news cycle. Bowman also expects too much of politicians here; the American politician follows public opinion, he does not create it.

We must also put celebrity in its place, according to Bowman. Mainstream culture focuses not on rewarding honor, but on rewarding fame-often for fame's sake alone, as with reality television and people like Paris Hilton. Men of actual achievement should have the courage to mock celebrity culture back when it mocks honor and achievement, and fight the desire to pander to the tastes of pop stars and actors and musicians. Interestingly, Bowman suggests that the celebrity culture of the mainstream media could be shamed into better behavior by more substantive outlets in the blogosphere.

There is also the thorny problem of feminism, and the challenges it poses to any viable honor culture.

Now it is women's right to a full measure of humanity that is here to stay, and honor must accommodate itself to that concept or become irrelevant. Or at least, as it has been up until now, unmentionable. Going back to the idea of women as property, which still prevails in many parts of the world, is now as thinkable for western Europeans and Americans as going back from democracy to absolute monarchy was for their ancestors in the nineteenth century.

This assumes that the modern social democratic state is infinitely sustainable, which it probably isn't. And it also assumes that women's "full measure of humanity" requires that they participate in state and business affairs in exactly the same way as men do. They can only do this now, and they only want to, because of the way the current system works. Bowman addresses this by suggesting that it is perhaps still possible to conceive, as other cultures do, that more traditional roles for women do not necessarily render them sub-human, and that there is a comparable but distinct value to be revered in the roles of wife and mother. By and large, issues like putting women in combat are symbolic for the feminist movement -- like same-sex marriage is for the gay movement. Most women don't really want to go to war, they just like the idea that they should be able to, no matter what the expense or social cost.
Conclusion

The long view of history suggests that our choice is eventually going to be not between the liberal, unisex, pacifistic society of the feminist ideal and some throwback to caveman honor, but between some throwback to caveman honor and some more civilized and feminist variant of the long-dormant Western variety.

Bowman's point here, back in its political context, is that the all but extinguished Western honor culture, which has been civilized and moderated in the past, is increasingly finding itself at war not with itself, but with a far less civilized and more barbaric honor culture. The choice may be between the balance of old Western honor culture and the honor culture that beheads its enemies and stones its women. The Traditional Western way of honor offers a middle way between Britney Spears and the burqa, between John Lennon and the suicide bomber. The Western left seems to be in denial of the possibility that these are very real polarities. It prefers instead to continue the West's war on itself, and hopes its progressive intentions will somehow trickle out and heal the world. The Western left believes questions of honor are silly playground games for boys; it has removed honor as a variable to consider. Bowman doubts it is truly possible to escape the basic reality of reflexive honor, no matter how we mask it or talk around it. In the West, if we're unable to embrace our moderated version of honor and say with conviction that our honor is better than their honor, then their version of honor may one day be the only alternative.
Recommendation
Honor: A History is an important book on the topic that, even outside of its own political context, provides insight into the history and present state of Western honor, as well as providing a valuable framework for discussing it -- particularly in terms of the differentiation between reflexive and cultural honor.