Clearpilled on Hogwarts
#1
Curtis Yarvin's strongest soldier on youtube may have just surpassed him, at least in drawing fantasy allegories to explain our times and circumstances.




There's also a transcript on substack, which I read rather than listening to the video.

https://fiddlersgreene.substack.com/p/th...m-hogwarts

I've really appreciated this guy for a long time. Extremely honest and grounded Catholic guy who has had more or less open contact with every piece of the political and ideas based internet and has always wanted to put on the best possible showing for the beliefs which he personally values and considers right. This particular piece is interesting as a thought exercise on popular culture, and the commentary on specific discourse within it.

The subject of this video is the complete inability of the regime (or what are meant to be its thinking organs) to answer serious challenges, intellectual or practical. The relevance of Rowling and Hogwarts being in that Rowling's complacent Boomer Truth Regime narrative touches on the points which led us here while completely papering over the difficult human realities that prevent life from actually being that simple. The parallel one can draw rather easily is that Slytherin are people who believe things which were normal before 1945.


Quote:I think the Harry Potter series represents a kind of apex merger between the old-world fantasy tradition and the height of the late 90s Boomer Truth regime, each trope spun together seamlessly by a middle-aged woman with an acute talent for beat storytelling and absolutely zero self-awareness. What emerges is a strange narrative Chimera, a captivating story that contains almost no wisdom, but seems to perfectly represent the defect in our modern cultural moment.

A magical British boarding school? That's a pretty standard fantasy trope. But things start getting weird and modern when we try to locate the villains. We are, after all, thoroughly cosmopolitan people so the evil force, menacing our protagonists can't simply be some demonic spiritual threat (too religious) or some external invader (too xenophobic). The antagonist, reflecting the true modern nature of evil, has to be internal, political, and vaguely traditional with roots running back to mid-century Germany and its chief moral-failing being “racism”.

JK Rowling seems to have given the subject of evil a lot of thought, but it never seems to come together. Black magic and dark magicians are shunned, students are taught to guard against them, and regulations against the "Dark Arts" seem to be a core part of the wizarding tradition going on for centuries. Yet practitioners of these Dark Arts, the "Death Eaters" comprise the most blue-blooded and traditional caste in their society, the most connected to the ancient core of the wizarding world. In fact, despite their forbidden nature, the dark arts seem to be built into the foundation of Hogwarts, with one of its schools, Slytherin, dedicated to training a new generation of irredeemably racist 11-year-olds to practice black magic.



Quote:In reality what has happened is that Rowling, in her earnestness to describe the moral and political reality of her time, has blithely written a straight-up moral contradiction into her fiction. The great perceived evil of our time is also a pillar of our historical legacy, academic institutions, and traditional social order. Our great Satan is one and the same as our great ancestor. And the traditions we honor and follow as part of our balanced “liberal” education are also the source we blame for all things wrong with modern society. But under these conditions, how can one square this circle? Maybe people need to be more open-minded and subtle in their perception of right and wrong? It’s a good bet that JK Rowling, like most Boomers, doesn’t really believe in evil. So the problem all seems rather academic.

But her millennial fans certainly do believe in evil. One of the first Boomer Truth regime illusions to be uniformly discarded by my generation (left, right, and center) is moral ambivalence. Something about growing up in the early 21st-century West makes it impossible not to believe in genuine human wickedness and depravity. It’s hard to look at the modern order and think that all roads in life inevitably lead back to the moral center. The devil walks among us and woe to those who follow his path of deceit and iniquity.


I don't think it's hard to argue that this is a far better thought out piece of work than Yarvin's Dime Square elves. I consider this part excellent, but it leads into something more real. Where he's going is that the conditions which lead to Boomer Truth Regime inevitably lead to total disregard for the past, followed by intellectual nihilism, followed by pure power-seeking. This process being visible in the increasingly anti-ideas, anti-intellectual direction academia has been taking for decades now, which is getting particularly out of hand in more recent years. A demonstrative case is cited, Matt McManus, an academic, not a journalist, made an attempt at addressing Curtis Yarvin. Libtards aren't morons who refuse to talk, McManus is here to assure us all these dorks are just idiots who got the history and data wrong.

McManus: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/curti...eactionary

But Yarvin has no institution job to protect, in fact it's actually his job to not let things like this stand. So he answered.

Yarvin: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-hi...old-regime

Both are summarised in the first linked piece, but also worth reading entirely if this subject interests you. Where this attempt at an exchange goes, is after this one reply McManus rebuffs all points he is asked to address and declares Yarvin too morally depraved to be capable of honest engagement. Meaning he must be ignored.


Quote:To start with the obvious, modern, scientifically-inspired critiques, derived from the work of Nietzsche, Freud, and Darwin, are not narrowly tailored intellectual defeaters for classical ethical traditions. Instead, these perspectives are (in the words of Daniel Dennet) "universal solvents". They are broad-based, extensive deconstructive attacks that reduce all human ethics to emergent properties and call into question all prescriptive moral sentiments. There is no get-out clause for the ethical perspectives that progressives like Matt enjoy using liberally in their own politics. Nietzsche's "death of God" does not come for the God of Aquinas and Aristotle, leaving the God of Paul Tillich and Martin Luther King alive and well. The critique is extensive. It applies to all moralism and all sacred sentimentality, traditional or progressive. 

Attempts by the left to save their political project from the deconstruction they apply to their enemies comprise an embarrassing catalog of sloppy thinking and special pleading. Invariably, the arguments amount to linguistic hat-tricks where philosophers smuggle their own preferred specific teleological preferences in through the backdoor while denying the existence of the concepts generally. Furthermore, the attempt to appeal to "will-to-power" or existentialism to reconstruct ethical certainty ends up being facile, since, just as the original critique deconstructs all forms of human value, an appeal to "will"  brings them all back. Far from solidifying a progressive worldview, the approach creates a post-modern condition where no system holds validity and political power itself becomes the only determination for authority.

But, for philosophers like Professor McManus, trying to integrate the progressive political project with choice parts of the Christian worldview the problem is even worse. Because the elements of the old tradition preferred by progressives (such as rights, equality of dignity, and compassionate universalism) rely more on the teleological and metaphysical core of the worldview than do the parts that they hate (hierarchy, practical inequality, and essentialist notions of identity).



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Quote:The thing is, as JK Rowling herself learned all too well, once you move from a spiritual concept of good to a political one, the revolution can never really stop. There are new crusaders coming up through the ranks, wanting to follow the example of Harry Potter, and looking for their own House Slytherins to slay. Perhaps House Hufflepuff is the new evil house? I heard Helga Hufflepuff made her fortune in the house-elf slave trade! And did you know that Rowena Ravenclaw believed in a biological basis for gender? I suppose that’s why there are so many Ravenclaw bigots trying to keep trans-witches out of the girl’s locker room at Hogwarts.

Thus, the standard of progress always rolls forward, and the revolution always eats its children. And as the purge continues, the richness of Hogwarts’ legacy diminishes bit by bit, the ancient wisdom shunned, and each chamber of particular and challenging secrets barred from access until the four dreaming spires of the school are consolidated into a monolith. From a magical place of learning to a staging area for ideological struggle sessions, recriminations, and witch-hunts.

Witness the closing of the Wizarding Mind.



The direction of the piece overall (original one this thread is about) is that there is no place for dissenters here. We cannot be allowed to be right. So this possibility won't even be considered. So where to from here? I think where this leads is a kind of better framing of Yarvin's Clearpill. "Leave Hogwarts."


Quote:Eventually, I think, the only solution will be psychological separation, a breaking of ways with the narrative frame of the old world. Whatever else is truly good and beautiful, whatever it is that is left when you turned your back on Hogwarts, it does not define your identity. You are no longer of "House Slytherin", you are no longer a "conservative", or a "Republican" or a "patriot". These are institutional relationships that now only act as a millstone around your neck, dragging you into the suicide of an old order.

But in this process of separation is there nothing to be salvaged from what we once knew about ourselves and the things we used to believe? Not at all.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the difference between good and evil, light and darkness, order and chaos. Whatever else is forgotten this must be remembered. The old order called us devils because they needed a devil to cover the tracks of their lies. But we are not devils, nor should we be tempted to their cause simply to spite our former adversaries, though many, I am afraid, will take this path. Whatever else was untruth, the existence of chaos and the dark arts were very real, and they remain no less ruinous now than ever. Our ancestors knew this all, before the first stone of the old world was set in place. Will this again have to be relearned through hard experience? If so, it will be a deadly lesson for both body and soul.

But after the threat of spiritual ruin, there remains the question of what might lead us forward and give us a greater purpose. Perhaps we can start with the things that we can’t leave behind: our faith, our families, the bond to our posterity, the link to our ancestors, and what remains of our heritage after the severing of all institutional bonds. Here there are some tricky questions, the fine line between the songs and spirit which might provide hope for the future and dangerous nostalgia that might chain us to a dead dream.

How would the exiled Malfoys now look back on the annals of their ancient family and the men of their tradition who forged their magical heritage? It’s difficult certainly, our ancestors will always be with us, and there is always a way in which we cannot escape their influence. But, just like Lot’s wife, there is danger in looking backward as the power of the past has a habit of obsessing the mind, never allowing us to make a new start.


Forgive me but I'm going to quote at length again for those who can't be bothered with the full piece.


Quote:But really, in a state of decline and exile, how can we regard a past that is larger than us? Dwarfing us both with its own majesty and degeneration, its extreme depravity and impossible heroism?
The only option is to maintain perspective. Perhaps the way the exiled Malfoy Family might regard the contradictory heritage of a Salazar Slytherin.

For instance, was there any validity in Salazar’s penchant for pureblooded magical lineage? Maybe. It almost certainly was based on some kernel of truth. But how relevant is that particular truth in the new age when the boundaries that constructed that distinction are crumbling down? After all, there will be half-blood and muggle allies which the Malfoys will need to survive, even if there is a separation at some level. And rank bigotry or condescension is a luxurious vice hardly affordable to the destitute. And so following a new sense of realism, a modern Malfoy may look back on, Salazar Slytherin with nuance: a person with many talents, much wisdom, some obsessions, and some failings but very much a man of his own time, only appreciable as such.

Because whatever virtues or vices Salazar Slytherin may have possessed in life, whatever wisdom he might have created which still exists, the man is dead. And there is no use in making the future a slave to his legacy. The only way to guard your family’s bloodline and find a new way for it to thrive is to seek its good within the actual challenges and opportunities of the world around you, pureblood, half-blood, or muggle.
Will this involve breaking faith with some strictures of the old order to find a new way? Perhaps. There most certainly is a trade-off here, and not an easy one.  Our ancestors, even those long removed from our times, do pass judgment on what we have built in this very different world. And for those of us who must, by necessity, take a different path, the only way to rightly address the challenge of the past is to cleave ever closer to the spirit of what our ancestors loved, even as we might cleave away from some of the forms they promulgated.

People call me a “traditionalist” online but I don’t really advocate for anything “Traditional” per se, just things that I find useful for the cause of life. After all the dead things must remain in their graves until judged by a Higher Power. They have no right to the future independent of the truth, goodness, or beauty they point to. I don’t tell people that they should read old books because they are old, I don’t tell people to believe in God because religion is good for society, I don’t put forward Christianity because Jesus was part of our heritage and a hero who died nobly.

No, the only reason you should read a book is that there is something true or beautiful in it, the only reason to believe in God is that God exists and is present in every moment of existence, and the only reason you should follow Christ is that He is alive.

And this brings me to the final and most poignant lesson for the dispossessed: the imperative to find new life. There was the old life that failed, never to return. But where does new collective vitality start? Almost certainly with the concept of the numinous.

We stand now in a strange and dark wilderness, a middle place between a dying old order and a crawling chaos that may devour us all. And yet, these conditions, though dire, are ideal for our purpose of discovering new transcendence.


Excellent piece of work both on a practical level and as cultural critique. If anybody wants to talk about Harry Potter or the state of NRX please feel free to do so here. Anything goes. The last Yarvin thread was fun.

And because I feel like I haven't posted enough media yet in this post have this:
 
#2
(05-09-2023, 02:33 AM)anthony Wrote:
Quote:In reality what has happened is that Rowling, in her earnestness to describe the moral and political reality of her time, has blithely written a straight-up moral contradiction into her fiction. The great perceived evil of our time is also a pillar of our historical legacy, academic institutions, and traditional social order. Our great Satan is one and the same as our great ancestor. And the traditions we honor and follow as part of our balanced “liberal” education are also the source we blame for all things wrong with modern society. But under these conditions, how can one square this circle? ...

This is one aspect of Harry Potter that always particularly stood out to me. Over the course of the series you see Potter, the Boy Who Lived (i.e., the Chosen Hero) embark on a voluminous journey to defeat Voldemort, the Dark Lord (i.e., the Chaos Monster), and of course he winds up victorious and instilled with all the morals that are supposed to make us feel nice and warm. Light triumphs over darkness, a story of good and evil and such. Only the entire thing is very much a revision of the motif that Rowling drew from. 

I hadn't really ever thought too much about the whole thing until I rewatched Potter's final battle with the basilisk in The Chamber of Secrets, which to me is a blatant retelling of the serpent-slaying myth, which itself is fundamentally Aryan. But in this retelling, the forces that stand for "pure-blood" and ancient tradition function as chaos, and Potter and his friends, representing the miscegenated, egalitarian worldview are the orderly and good. What really amazes me is that despite this -- and I don't see how she could have been anymore attentive to libtard morality at the time she began writing these books -- is that it still simply wasn't enough to save her from the hordes of the mentally deranged, all because of her not bending on the transvestite issue. A really great irony of the times, I'd say. 


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The main article's discussion of academia is also important. Anyone with half-functioning mental cognition who has attended university, no matter the prestige, in America or Britain within the last few decades sees the rot, but the last ten years have been no holds barred. You could probably still consider these institutions legitimate for some time post-war, but AD 1945 is really just Year 1 of the GNC era. However, I don't subscribe to the "don't go to college" trope that you see from time to time because I think it's stupid and could only come from the mouths of people who are not yet clearpilled, as Yarvin might say.

Quote:This new world will require struggle, but our peril is poetic. Because it is only in these wild places that we can accomplish our task to rediscover purpose, since purpose is the possession of a wild God.

You have to ride the tiger, I suppose.
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God helps those who help himself; I approve of that idea myself.
#3
I don't agree that there's a real contradiction.  Malfoy and the Slytherins are indeed a historical pillar of society in her world, but so is the other house, Gryffindor.  Slytherin is Bad History (aristocratic parochialism, stuffiness, it's interesting that they aren't imperialists but leave that aside for now).  But Gryffindor is Good History, and includes many members with illustrious pedigrees and deep historical roots in the world, including Potter.  The difference is that Gryffindor is open to diversity, Reads The Room, and occupies all the important academic and civil service positions instead of...magic foxhunting and fascist secret societies or whatever it is the Malfoys do all day. Occupying hereditary offices which they use to frustrate Reform.  Queen Lizzie was a Gryffindor.

Same thing with "dark arts".  Yes, it's an internal enemy.  What do you expect, it's Britain, so was Mordred.  And boomers do believe in evil: they call it Fascism.  Voldemort is Oswald Moseley.  Of course such people aren't supposed to exist in The Current Year; that's what The Dark Arts are for (and Voldemort's primary goal in pursuing black magic is exactly that: to extend his life beyond its natural bounds).

Of course there is a British tradition of fighting external threats...in the Colonies.  I think it's telling that British imperialism has zero relevance in Rowling's worldview as communicated in the Harry Potter books.  Her moral worldview is firmly anchored around WW2 and Fascism.  Of course 1990s Britain had not reason to think about the Empire at all; that was dredged up much later to browbeat whites.  Voldemort could have easily been trying to restore Magical Britain to its former prominence; instead he's some kid butthurt that the wrong side won WW2, so he tries to oppose Gryffindor social reforms via terrorism since the idea of leaving and returning with an army is absurd to the British mind.  This is somehow linked to the 1970s depression of Rowling's childhood.

As for breaking with the regime's frame: yeah sure.
#4
Got frustrated typing a longer response to the piece, so I'll abbreviate:

Quote:I think the Harry Potter series represents a kind of apex merger between the old-world fantasy tradition and the height of the late 90s Boomer Truth regime, each trope spun together seamlessly by a middle-aged woman with an acute talent for beat storytelling and absolutely zero self-awareness.

Perfect synopsis. Her morphology of evil is outwardly old-world fantasy aesthetic of dark hooded robes, snakes, and skull-ornaments coupled to boomer dogma tropes such as torture, extra-judicial killings, and MLK-type racism (discrimination based on circumstances of birth, not even "real" racism). If she has "given the subject of evil a lot of thought", it doesn't show.

Engaging the piece felt frustrating because Harry Potter is, simply put, junk literature and it's taints all analyses of it. I won't really comment on the subject level, therefore. "Slytherins are WASPs" is the type of sentence that should signal to its author that it's time to engage a different field of inquiry.

Apart from Harry Potter nonsense, the main claims are these, in my eyes:
- "The (modern) magic world has no place for the numinous"
- "the only solution will be psychological separation, a breaking of ways with the narrative frame of the old world."

Both of which I agree with. The first maybe less so than the second, but in any case I fail to see how the second is something different than what Yarvin says.



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