Psychopolitics and The Right

[anthony]

There's a frustrating tendency among the right all the way up to and including those among our thing to completely discount and reject the idea of the darker and deeper elements of our minds and inner lives having any bearing upon our politics. I believe that this is a mistake if done for practical concerns (a belief that since the left pushed this, it must be a framing in which they somehow win or will get us) and an error if it's a genuinely held belief (if there's nothing to this then what? Do you have no deeper inner life? Does your attitude towards the world spring into being fully formed out of some kind of Bronskian equation based on your genetics?)

I've read a few books on the subject before (but never got around to the big one, 'The Authoritarian Personality'), but where this comes up more often (always really, for better or worse the right just doesn't touch any historic psychology) and makes me believe we have a problem is in the arts. I recently witnessed an acquaintance make confident, sweeping indictments against the character and beliefs of Mamoru Oshii (Writer of the film 'Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade', a popular film and collection of imagery among our thing) over a series of rather elaborate and pointed assumptions made about his character, entirely on the basis that Jin-Roh psychologises its protagonist, a violent enforcer for a repressive right wing modern regime.

The film does psychologise. But I had to ask this acquaintance, "have you ever looked into Oshii talking about his own work?" There was an admission that he had not, followed by a retraction and a dropping of the subject after some quick reading. I found this disappointing for several reasons. I think it's a great shame that we take the entire serious study of man's inner life to be a field that belongs to the left and is only their business. Yes, we have our Nietzsche and such, but anything that gets remotely verbal or neurotic is treated like taboo. Of course the other problem is the lack of respect displayed for Oshii as an artist, despite all of the beautiful imagery to emerge from his work, someone could take it as a matter of course that he was a seriously morally/spiritually corrupt figure for association with a forbidden area of thought. But of course it wasn't consciously framed as such, the area is considered forbidden because there's no real conceptualisation of the possibility that the thing could be anything but a threat to us or offer anything to anybody but a leftist.

The discovery that Oshii was not staging a leftist attack upon the right was not a pathway into a richer discussion or appreciation of the work. It was simply dropped.

The paranoid fear-response is somewhat justified by history. The field was basically only used to build pretexts for attacking the right for most of its history. Most of these people didn't have a lot of academic integrity or self awareness. But as I keep saying, the answer is not to declare a taboo, or run and concede ground. The answer is to hit back. If it's a field of study or thought, and we are the side which draws its right to rule from our superiority and the fact we are sane and correct, what do we have to be afraid of? Yes, they can just take over universities and call the ref to declare them winners by default within their own territory, but whenever they pull that trick they get dumber, and the wilderness of free discourse zones becomes stronger and more appealing to those seeking anything good and real.

Psychologising, both in general and explicitly within politics, is not a domain in which the left has a natural advantage. Like the memes about culture and the arts it's just memes, and something they've used to bury and deny a history and tradition of our own superiority to us. They're occupying this territory, but that doesn't mean it's theirs.



Does Oshii psychologise the right in his work, especially the Kerberos films? Absolutely. I say films because it's actually far more extreme in the other two.

Yes... But what does this mean? Like with all art, a good way to cut through confusion might be to abandon all received memes and just ask yourself how you feel in response to this thing. Do you feel attacked watching Jin-Roh? If you found it cool. Inspiring even. Are you being attacked? Does that make sense? How do you explain that?

Of course there is an explanation which many people embrace.



"He psychologised people like me, so he was attacking me. But the people like me also looked cool. So he made a kind of visual freudian slip and accidentally let our innate coolness prevail despite malevolent intentions. What an IDIOT! I am smarter than Paul Verhoeven, Mamoru Oshii, John McTiernan, etc"

That's one way to read all of this. And as you can tell I think it's a retarded way. Is conflict within an artist possible? Yes. We actually discuss it quite a bit here. But the way we tend to do that is by studying the artists. Why I told the acquaintance to actually look up what Oshii says. Starship Troopers is the subject of much of the dumbest cultural discourse on the entire internet. And it goes back and forth forever without ever making any progress because the skeleton key to actually reaching a definitive opinion on anything and escaping shitflinging opinion hell, the artist behind the work, is almost entirely ignored. I have only ever seen ONE quote from Verhoeven ever raised in discussions of this film. And it's the one from the ancient imdb trivia factoid. The one that's on the wikipedia page. That Verhoeven didn't like Heinlein's book. One of the great European filmmakers, one of the greatest action directors of all time, this is as far as people will acknowledge life or agency or relevance in him. Because of course it feeds into the picture both sides want to have of the work, both taking psychologising as an innately leftist and offensive tool. Both sides agree, Verhoeven hates what he is depicting and is attacking the right. The right believe he accidentally made them look cool. The left believe that because of his intentions you're an idiot if you think it's cool.

Of course both are wrong. Verhoeven, like Oshii, grew up in more contact with authentic right authoritarianism than any of us. Verhoeven grew up in Nazi occupied Holland, Oshii in postwar Japan. They grew up through and beyond the phenomena, and so are uniquely positioned to see it as something real and substantial, and not something they're in direct contact (let alone conflict) with. What I would say that they have in common is that they both see the tendencies as something naturally human and perennial. It's something that can and will emerge from people and so is not really to be fought, because it cannot. The fascist war-fever that catches in humanity in Starship Troopers is not presented as a disgusting delusion. Verhoeven deliberately channels the aesthetics and sensations of historic successful invocations of the spirit to create an authentic experience of it. He is not attacking the phenomena, he is exploring and presenting it. These films are not partisan attacks. We are shown stupidity, panic, error, zeal, chaos and tragedy, but we also see the awe inspiring heights of a mobilised society with the purity of war in mind, we see the frivolous, naive, and venal elements of humanity hardened into mature, capable, and impressive creatures of purpose and determination.

Like all human endeavours and experiences it is not a pure thing.

Verhoeven actually made several films directly about the Dutch experience in World War 2. Naturally nobody with confident opinions on what his work means has seen any of them.



This film's ending is very Verhoeven. Not either of their Verhoeven's. It is what one could only expect if familiar with his broader body of work and the perspective consistently displayed through it. Almost the very last line in the film is: "We'll simply start where we left off five years ago."

War came. War went. A few of the old faces are gone now. A few people are changed. Some memorable things happened, some hard things happened, and some of us are still here. This is a very impartial and rather emotionally distant landing place, but one which is not incompatible with viewing the actions taken during war and periods of right wing action as having roots in the depths of human psychology. In fact if you actually watch all of Verhoeven's films you will probably find a trend towards sympathy to the right and neurotic human extremes. Verhoeven believes in right psychopathologies, but is not their enemy.



Now Jin-Roh. For those of you who don't know or were mentally asleep/enslaved by received memes by watching. Oshii's Kerberos films are about warband cultures forming within the Japanese police in an alternate more rightist post-war post-defeat period. Oshii clearly sees tragic potential in these warbands, and certain repeated complexes and neurosis driving and occurring within them. But he is not condemning them. Again, the idea is to present and explore something perennial. Oshii constantly draws canine parallels to his authoritarian personalities. But the man does not hate dogs. He loves them. And, as Gainax joke in FLCL, he thinks he is one.



Yes, the rightward tendencies towards organisation, hierarchy, the idealisation of loyalty, authority figures and moral orders, there is a pursuit of emotional fulfillment in these.  Acknowledging that is not an own. It's not something to be afraid of. It used to be presented as such under the triumphant and one-sided insinuation that opposed beliefs and human tendencies had a purity to them, that authoritarianism and fascism were a kind of abnormal psychological growth which, if scoured off, would reveal a perfect and pure human nature underneath. That may have sounded potentially convincing if you looked at the triumphant and ascendant post-war US and didn't think too hard about it. But who could possibly make that case now?

Where does this leave us? I think now that our enemies are more vulnerable to psychologising than ever (far more than we ever were), if anything, it's a good time to open ourselves up to this field of thought. We might learn about ourselves, and people in general, and I think we can rest assured that whatever we find will reflect far more poorly upon our enemies than ourselves. You might be afraid of this, but that's fine. It's what you have me for. Throw me in the verbal cage match with Adorno's strongest soldier and we'll see who's ripping who's spine out like The Predator after a few moments.

I talk mostly about culture and art in this post because that's where it comes up, but I believe that even going into this among ourselves we could treat some of our own issues beyond struggling to understand movies more complex than Conan the Barbarian. The rejections of Oshii and Verhoeven are rejecting more complex possible ideas on who we are. It's the same neurosis that causes men in their 30s who work at a computer to pretend to be movie tough guys on twitter as an embrace of the right. There's an ongoing association between complexity, fineness, ambivalence and neurosis with corruption. Yes, I am saying neurosis should not be considered bad. Someone has not got you if they note that have unsettled activity in your head. That you do certain things to deal with internal states and feelings. The idea that a good and healthy man is one who is pure unconsidered vital action is a neurotic's fantasy of escape. Not an ideal we can, or probably even should want to be. Higher civilisation is something built and maintained. Decisions are made, possibilities and feelings put aside for others. The same is true of higher and more complex men. 

If you can be deconstructed, it's because you are constructed. That is not a bad thing. Even if the authoritarian personality has fundamental truth to it, what does that matter? How are you threatened? I already more or less see people this way, and if you're on this site and have read this you probably haven't find the places this has led me too disagreeable, have you?

I believe that complex motivating underlying psychological phenomena are at the root of everything worthwhile humanity has ever done. From the first men who put on canine skins all the way to reaching the moon. At what point does exploring this become a problem? I intend to make a thread on Oshii's Kerberos trilogy now. Perhaps in there one of you can watch the movies and tell me where I should find issue.

[JohnTrent]

[...]

It's been interesting reading this defense of psychopolitics, and very persuasive as well. Most of my reservation, as first described in the shoutbox, has been related to the leftist application of psychopolitics. I will summarize the initially described position before proceeding onto newer statements. I had first stated that there's a tendency of psychopolitics to be boring, but admitted immediately after that this may be a problem of untapped potential — in short, there are hidden methodologies and nonexistent books to be made from the rightward orientation. This brings me to something completely different, but may strike some here as an interesting comparison. It is in writers like these where I think we can diagnose the problems of leftist psychopolitics.

Freud is certain to be remembered and honoured as one of the pioneers of scientific psychology. But it is probable that like Kepler he will be regarded as a scientist who discovered important empirical facts but was unable to synthesise these discoveries except in a primitive semi-magical framework. Kepler with his divine Sun God, lived in the religious age of physics, Freud for all his honesty, lives in the mythical era of psychology.

This was a statement by a Marxist named Christopher Caudwell in the essay titled Freud: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology. What I find to be relevant here is that, unlike later French Marxists like Althusser, people like Caudwell were mostly hostile to Freud. This is a short-lived intellectual tendency amongst the British Marxists where they had sought to combat empiricists and many other detractors, taking on a strong polemical tone in their writings. It is a somewhat similar style to Lenin's older book Materialism and Empirio-criticism. This hostility was not restricted to the British Marxists, either; certain texts produced in the Soviet Union like Fundamentals of Marxist Leninism or A History of Classical Sociology by Igor Semyonovich Kon both adopt a dismissive attitude about Freud specifically, and a J.D. Bernal (Jewish) wrote an article called Psychoanalysis and Marxism to similar effect: psychoanalysis and Marxism ought not be synthesized. Perhaps the biggest indictment that Caudwell gives to Freud is that the psychoanalytic movement was too schismatic in his eyes, therefore being possessed all along by the insidious spirit of religion. This, in Caudwell's mind, reflects a "crisis" in bourgeoisie thought. What makes someone like Caudwell relevant to us is that, unlike the J.D. Bernal mentioned above, he does take something from Freud (no matter how much he deceives himself). There are more pointed statements for proof, namely the basic acceptance of the Unconscious's existence, but certain terms used in two separate writings may deserve a further glance.

Experiment leads us to believe that the innervations concerned in consciousness are phylogenetically the most recent in evolution, and that the older the neurone groups, the less modifiable they are in their behaviour, i.e. the less they are able to ‘learn’ by ‘experience’. Hence they may be described as more infantile, primitive, bestial, archaic, or automatic, according to the mythological language one is adopting at the time.

Mythological language, okay. That is from the same essay mentioned above. Now let us turn to Caudwell's description of a writer I grow fonder of lately:

But at a revolution two paths are possible. So indeed they are in evolution – one can either stay still and be classical, academic and null, or go forward. But at a time of revolution it is not possible to stay still, one must either go forward, or back. To us this choice appears as a choice between Communism and Fascism, either to create the future or to go back to old primitive values, to mythology, racialism, nationalism, hero-worship, and participation mystique. This Fascist art is like the regression of the neurotic to a previous level of adaptation.
[...]
But it is D.H. Lawrence’s final tragedy that his solution was ultimately Fascist and not Communist. It was regressive. Lawrence wanted us to return to the past, to the ‘Mother’. He sees human discontent as the yearning of the solar plexus for the umbilical connexion, and he demands the substitution for sharp sexual love of the unconscious fleshy identification of foetus with mother. All this was symbolic of regression, of neurosis, of the return to the primitive.

The second set of statements preceded the Freud essay, both included right alongside each other in Studies of a Dying Culture. I find them contradictory. Caudwell here seems half of a mind to reject the terminology of psychoanalysis, leaving almost no trace or residue of its influence, yet also wishes to include it in his rejection of the horrible bourgeois author. It should be noted here that the mention of religion and the importance of a schismatic character to psychoanalysis is its essentially bourgeois character. Caudwell believes there is a paucity of insight in psychology due to bourgeois influence, as seen in a later essay "Consciousness: A Study of Bourgeois Psychology" [Creative names here, right?].

It is a muddle without hope as long as psychologists move within the circle of bourgeois philosophy.

Where I would go from here is that someone like Caudwell has some deep agreements with someone like Adorno, even if it isn't immediately apparent. Both of them basically are averse to a psychology of instincts, and regard social forces (whatever they may be) as the primary aspect of true psychology. "It is in fact impossible to study psychology without a background of sociology", Caudwell says. For some reason, I find this statement to be mostly correct, for the sole reason that brings us to this topic. Psychopolitics is a form of thought that seeks to explain the behaviors and specific conditions of faithful political believers. The inadequacy, as you state, comes from the weakness of those aligned to it — they are on the left. A person similar to the names mentioned above have certain motives in defaming the Fascist or the Rightist, but has a limited repertoire. One must accept Freud and defame him in the same breath. I mentioned Klaus Theweleit in a negative light in the shoutbox, and I think this might be another good example why there's an impoverished attitude within the leftist form of psychopolitics. Someone like him is looking at a few interesting excerpts about the Freikorps (diary entries and published texts) then subordinating it to a "Deleuzian" analysis about how Fascism is motivated purely by destructive desire. For one thing, this serves a rhetorical purpose and strikes me as a quite vulgar way of dismissing a true explanation of neurosis (let's assume they were neurotic). Another more pressing issue is that someone like Theweleit managed to compile these materials and used the laziest possible exit. Someone like Deleuze might have made a work commentary to psychoanalysis but one must wonder what place it has in describing the set of people chosen by Theweleit.

The problem on the left is that its psychopolitical thought has no imagination. One hears a description of "fascist psychology" and prepares to hear a short list of familiar words. The problem on the right, for awhile, is that there has been no foundation. This all could change very shortly, and I think in hindsight that some of the posts on here and Amarna1 have formed a satisfactory approach to the leftist mind. Perhaps members of the forum could write The Norwooded Personality in the future .

[Zed]

Yes, the rightward tendencies towards organisation, hierarchy, the idealisation of loyalty, authority figures and moral orders, there is a pursuit of emotional fulfillment in these.  Acknowledging that is not an own. It's not something to be afraid of. It used to be presented as such under the triumphant and one-sided insinuation that opposed beliefs and human tendencies had a purity to them, that authoritarianism and fascism were a kind of abnormal psychological growth which, if scoured off, would reveal a perfect and pure human nature underneath. That may have sounded potentially convincing if you looked at the triumphant and ascendant post-war US and didn't think too hard about it. But who could possibly make that case now?

Where does this leave us? I think now that our enemies are more vulnerable to psychologising than ever (far more than we ever were), if anything, it's a good time to open ourselves up to this field of thought. We might learn about ourselves, and people in general, and I think we can rest assured that whatever we find will reflect far more poorly upon our enemies than ourselves. You might be afraid of this, but that's fine. It's what you have me for. Throw me in the verbal cage match with Adorno's strongest soldier and we'll see who's ripping who's spine out like The Predator after a few moments.

There is no broadly applicable psychoanalysis of the right. The one echoed here is mere mythology, and we cannot demarcate territories given the sheer ideological and spirit diversities present. Put simply, one cannot encompass the culture of this place, figures like Nick Fuentes, Bronze Age Pervert, Steve Sailer, Matt Walsh, Javier Milei, or Adolf Hitler under any single contextual tent and expect it to have meaning. But the problem is even more fundamental, for such an analysis is horribly in-frame.

Psychopolitics is interesting - but I think it is the wrong starting point to take the expressly held beliefs of the ideology. Does the current regime not have a distinctive hierarchy? It does. It is surely highly organized - the American DNC is a machine, as described  in the shoutbox is yesterday. It absolutely has a moral order, and many individuals find emotional fulfillment in it's enforcement. Only loyalty is not commonly invoked, for it is not as emotionally resonant as the idea of being a 'good human being'. That said, it - like every other western political system - is implicitly based on loyalty/tit-for-tats structures between donors and the party apparatus. In modern China, one finds an extremification of all of these trends. They are universal and you may find them everywhere . 

I claim that none of these matter and further that the vast majority of people on 'the right', even here, do not actually care that much about them. Less this read as an attack, I would say the vast majority of communists/leftists do not actually care about egalitarianism in a genuine principled way either. In almost all cases, the roots of ideals emerge from things far more primitive and base, with ideals emerging as a kind of post-facto memetic clothing. 

Let us start close to home: Why exactly are there amarnites?

It is obviously not conservative morals, the posters here regularly make a game of spitting on traditional morality - praising the rape of lolis, and the molestation of Pokemon, and (innumerable) fantasies of murder/torture. Expounding on the last: Note how TND is discussed with a vengeful glee, an energy more resonant of a school shooter manifesto than a priestly sermon.

Nor is for a desire of organization of hierarchy. Perhaps some amongst you have a natural inclination towards that - I'm thinking of Mikka. In practice, the community seems anarchic and 4chan-esque in it's free-flowing structure and minimal rule-enforcement. The twitter side seems to be an even worse shitshow, where half of you can't even keep track of the other half's account names, and are drawn into subcultural wars against other marginal factions with shifting lines. This is not the SA - or even a larp of such. It is frankly far stupider and more chaotic than that.

Loyalty? Perhaps there is something to this one - but it is not so cut and dry. A few of you have shared with me little snippets of backroom discord/twitter GC drama, the pettiness, the ego games, and the absolute immaturity of many involved. Loyalties mutating far too commonly.

A desire for authority figures? There is some truth to this one. Here it is you essentially (and Mikka in the twitter context). Though you're a loose dictator and I remain unconvinced that you ever even desired to be one. It seems much as you seemed to inadvertently stumbled upon being one by conditions of your own personal magnetism - after all, the forum was always a vehicle for you own expression, often more gear towards art and cultural analysis than politics. Still, your inhabitation of that role draws people to you who esteem you as such.

If want to approach the true psychological origins here, we need to look at baser thing, and I would posit that most people arrive at being an Amarnite because of a sense of unfairness, oppression, and loneliness. From here on, I will now write to the second-person 'you', an assemblage that I imagine as the 'generic' Amarnite. Not to Anthony himself.

Oppression? Just insert a history of gamergate here. Recall every-time you were excluded or marginalized for making a bad joke, that you saw a community you enjoyed taken over and destroyed by modern moralists (oft, by 'trannies' and women - but not exclusively). This oppression has ensured that you cannot have nice things, and that every endeavor is to be stained and imprinted with the moral conformity to the values of the age. Your favorite anime is not black enough, favorite movie not gay enough, and your favorite video game doesn't even have a female protagonist. Those who object to this are racists, homophobes, antisemites, and fascists. If you stood in principle against these this oppression, then you became all of those things --- but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Unfairness? You sense that you're less then every time you apply for a job. You sensed it when you wrote a college application. You weren't gay, black, or female. You didn't have the marginalized creds, and those who did - they were desired more than you, regardless of your own personal qualities and talents. It simply didn't matter how good you were. Fairness and equality was preached at you, but it was not practiced towards you. You are told that you oppress women, but you wonder how could even oppress them, when the dating market is rigged against you. Everything favors them and nothing favors you - and you are the punching bag for all their discomfort. And for this, you're still reminded of ancestral sins, made to carry the responsibilities imposed on your ancestors. Meanwhile, their behaviors - their moral failings are ignored or - worse - embraced and supported by the culture at large. This may or may not have been the truth, or even you truth - but it is likely how you felt, at one point or another.

Had you expressed any of this to someone who didn't get it, you would have been regarded as a loser. In fairness, you may indeed actually be a loser, but it is hard to say, because it always seemed like the Go board ensured the Black always had 15.5 Komi, and you (White) had none. 

The rest is the story of one of a Salmon following the upstream. Be it through 4chan, kiwifarms, discords, frogtwitter and immnumerable paths, you got exposed and aligned with a series of high density memetic ideas shared by people who felt similarly to you. There was knowledge there, and it imprinted on you - shifting the course and flow of your river. Perhaps you had a trad cath phase, before you grew tired of the loathsome moral faggotry and internal cultural policing that defines that wretched subculture. Maybe, you sought a thing freer, less constrained. Amarna is one many possible distributaries at the end of this river. 

BAP invokes the mythology of nemesis, and Amarna might best be described as loser-nemesis, an anti-culture desiring a total inversion of values of the age - a place that finds it's highest glee in desecrating the idols of those regarded as your enemies. And it is indeed an inversion, not a Nietzschean transvaluation. The more psychotic the Gigachad dialogue is - the better. The harder the meme goes, the more wicked and repugnant - the funnier it is.  This is not true for all of you, though it is true for many. (I... stress again that this part of the reply is not written to Anthony, who himself embodies one of the most constructive elements of this subculture. He, at least, is not the persona described.)

Finally, at the end of this distributary, perhaps you did indeed find something you sought. Was it friendship? Was it community? I know there are those amongst you that deeply value the friendships you formed here or in the adjacent communities/discords. Some of you have yet to find either - and will return to the main river that you forked from in due time. Either way, had the world been fair to any of you, and had you not known the pain of intense loneliness and and alienation - you wouldn't be here. Everything past this constitutes a domain of lies that humans are fond of telling themselves.

[Guest]

I am not sure who denies that one's nature indicates their politics. As for construction, it is the chicken or the egg. As for Jin-Roh, I enjoyed it. Starship Troopers was enjoyable too, but much less significant. I prefer the movie Doom. People will generally call whatever they like "based" or whatever the word changes to depending on who is saying it. Hence the strange essays on various sides to claim x,y,z work.
I dislike the term psychopolitics because it is unnecessary and obfuscating. Politics already describes what this new term is attempting to describe. It is a term made for university fodder to pontificate about in theses and so on. I will write a new thesis: "Synthetic psychopolitics: The Birth of the New Man" to further obfuscate this. You see the problem.

[august]

I believe that complex motivating underlying psychological phenomena are at the root of everything worthwhile humanity has ever done. From the first men who put on canine skins all the way to reaching the moon.

I ask in complete good faith, how do you square this with what has appeared to be your distaste for evopsych? When I consider what so-called "psychopolitics", as I understand it, attempts to explain—along with what others have already noted in this thread—I have trouble trying to differentiate it, to any significant degree, from the supposed general aspects of evolutionary psychology that are purported to be natural amongst humans, i.e., in-group preferences, hierarchy and leadership, cooperation to achieve a shared goal or desire, etc. 

@Zed made an assertion worth noting: "If [we] want to approach the true psychological origins here, we need to look at [a] baser thing, and I would posit that most people arrive at being an Amarnite because of a sense of unfairness, oppression, and loneliness." OK. This is one opinion on it, which may very well have some truth to it. Personally, I see it slightly differently, as I've said in another thread:

Why have so many of us, to date, gone out of our way to even make an account? One reason has to be because we're offered a certain freedom here that we don't have on other platforms, and just generally in modern society today. Another that's just undeniable and by extension related to the previous is that there's an elevated level of conversation happening here. A platform like Twitter is deeply retarded because you are subject to all the worst levels of subhuman retardation that unfortunately managed to somehow get their hands on a phone and access to the internet. Hundreds of millions of active Twitter users. It excludes no one. We have to be honest, part of this forum's appeal is that not many retards know about it [...] It is exclusive[.]

This characterisation isn't completely incompatible with how Zed puts it, but it depends on how one interprets "unfairness, oppression, and loneliness" as used. To me, Zed made the "generic Amarnite" sound like too much of a loser/failed normie:

Had you expressed any of this to someone who didn't get it, you would have been regarded as a loser. In fairness, you may indeed actually be a loser

Either way, had the world been fair to any of you, and had you not known the pain of intense loneliness and and alienation - you wouldn't be here. Everything past this constitutes a domain of lies that humans are fond of telling themselves.

I am neither of these things, and I am fine saying so because I don't really give a shit and I very much dislike the idea of seeing oneself as a loser, or failure, or in any similar light. That's not me being a Tough Guy—I'm nothing special—but rather just a way of showing how this way of psychologising can fall short, particularly in an anonymous setting. How do we know that William "Billy" O'Nare isn't an Irish-American hedge-fund manager? Or that Striped Pyjama Nietzschean Boy doesn't have 140K followers on X? We don't know, so this general categorising runs this risk of turning a guess into an all but definitive label if one isn't careful about how they word it. Notice how the above is worded: "you would have been regarded as a loser." Regarded as a loser by whom, exactly? The very same people that I consider retarded human cattle? That [generally] aren't present on this site (which is why I use it)? Ow, ouch.

Point being, if you're on The Amarna Forum Net and making, or even just digesting, contributive insights (i.e., searching for the truth, whether you realise it or not) that you'd seldom find anywhere else, if you "get it", I think it's more accurate to say that you're actually someone who, at their core, wants to win, and who sees a place with others that share a similar mindset of also wanting to win... some people are really good at making posts, others are really good at digesting posts. Oh, you share 99% of the same political views too? L'Empereur, il Duce, der Führer, Tenno Heika... the Leader that others want to follow. See what I just did there? Was I psychologising politically or evolutionarily?

[Zed]

Had you expressed any of this to someone who didn't get it, you would have been regarded as a loser. In fairness, you may indeed actually be a loser

Either way, had the world been fair to any of you, and had you not known the pain of intense loneliness and and alienation - you wouldn't be here. Everything past this constitutes a domain of lies that humans are fond of telling themselves.

I am neither of these things, and I am fine saying so because I don't really give a shit and I very much dislike the idea of seeing oneself as a loser, or failure, or in any similar light. 

For clarity, I don't mean to imply the people here are losers, just the possibility of it. For those who faced rejection of society, one can only know on a case-by-case basis the nature of their experiences. I debated in my head for a bit on the 'loser-nemesis' line, it was not intended as unflattering as it sounded. Some context may clarify -

In DMs with someone here, I was remembering the RW reaction to the Joker movie when it came out a few years. I believe that sympathy with school shooters is not an uncommon feeling for those who have been outsiders, but it rarely finds an outlet - the social discussion that followed the release of that movie there was a surge of 'literally me' posts, but also a genuine sympathy amongst a larger number of people for the character portrayed. In many ways, the character of a Joker served as a proxy to express a feeling/emotion that was typically too transgressive to be broached. Sympathy for Eric, Dylan, Adam, and Elliot. Amarna has a more dignified version of that energy/will, but it is still bound to a matrix of inverse values. A decade ago, being a giant anime fan was the mark of a loser. Or at least, it was seen as such socially. Here, it is commonly regarded as the most dignified living art-form. Chris-Chan is considered an outsider artist of actual merit. Incels are sympathized with as having valid objections to the modern world. 

And I of course agree with all three of these takes! Still, I think to myself - how would normies see it? Loser is likely an example of the external label that would be cast, but Amarna itself is a reaction against that label. Unconsciously perhaps, but is a reaction nonetheless. An effort to produce a mixture of perspectives that would be stigmatized as such and recast them through a noble/aristocratic/cultured lens. What is the nature/spirit that compels a man to write a 5000 word defense of Undertale? This is an example of the psychological question I like to think about when I read certain threads here.

[Svevlad]

"Well, first of all, nobody says loser anymore, probably a part of that whole NPDEA thing."

Anyways, let's start - I have always been a man of nuance. I tend to obsess over improbable situations, every law needs to define every case - it genuinely takes effort to actually make me reductive. And yes, this makes no sense, as I tend to be rather irritable, prone to frustration and anger - seethe if you will - and do this often, but only because I am exposed to such things. "The Bad." Neurotic? Perhaps. People I know irl tend to say I am unnaturally cold and cruel, so that one remains to be seen. Note THOUGH that I am atrocious at self-introspection. I might as well be a camera that observes things.

I am getting derailed here. Due to my tendency for nuance, and therefore neutrality of sorts, I hope, I never ever pick exclusively one side. Yes, evopsych is right. Yes, psychology, psychoanalysis, etc is right as well. Genes are a beam of light; the environment and society (same thing) are the prism. Or the inverse - irrelevant, as both work.

The left's obsession with psychologizing comes from them being - I am going to do amateur psychologization here - being a bunch of female-brained scoundrels, who therefore get off to humiliating their enemies. What better way to do that than to spout a bunch of drivel how all your enemies are secretly gay sissy incel degenerates who are maladapted and nobody likes them (projection)? It's just laundering their always secret and buried belief in the power of genetics - they say that the right exists due to le bad social influences and that Adolf Hitler, if born in the communist utopia (coming soon), would be a great working class wholesome chungus hero. Force them to say this. Look at their face. They will barely be able to say it. Their mouth will be crooked, their giddy smile turns sour. But it's obvious - history has shown us - that they will go out their way to exterminate entire families, children and all, because, uh, uh, umm, they're hereditary fascists, GOY!

If there's one thing that the right dislikes, it's someone trying to humiliate them. A healthy sense of self-worth, "individual sovereignty" or whatever. And another thing the right tends to have, at least the bulk does, is a sort of tunnel vision not unlike that which soldiers get in the heat of combat, and can make them not see certain important things. And since the left behaves like a rabid ape, tossing everything they can to the enemy - psychoanalysis and sociology included - the right gets an automatic revulsion.

This thread is not about leftists, though - it's about rightists. One thing that defines rightists, especially the "normier" kinds, is what the leftists call "reactionism," but is a specific kind of "neurosis" about purity. Memes about "trooncore games" and "norwoodisms" and similar things have one thing in common, apart from not actually being fully serious in most cases: these are all mostly innocuous things that have been "tainted" by association with a certain type considered bad. Any merit these things might've had has been thrown out, any praise risks to raise the ire of those ever more serious, and accusations of various cuckings... Purity spiraling.

But what about the Amarnite? Such things happen here, and especially on twitter as well, but with far less seriousness. There's a smaller insistence on purity, and more discernment... More nuance. Due to the complexity of both genetic and environmental influences, there can't be a single, typical psychology... Though feelings of alienation are common, the main motivator of this group - one common theme, and what I think is the central one - a feeling of disillusionment, frustration, *annoyance* at the current state of things. You don't have to be bullied, excluded, or suffer through various kinds of normie sadisms, you just have to be intelligent enough and have a certain personality to simply *see*. It's not being "a fellow loser" that makes the Amarnite sympathize with mass shooters - but simply the fact that they understand. We understand these things so innately that we didn't even think about them in-depth or put them to words.

While the leftoid and rightoid participate in shitflingings regarding Jin-Roh or Starship Troopers and how they're parodies, mockeries, keyed, unkeyed, accidentally keyed, the Amarnite (hopefully) simply calls those things *natural*. Exceptional circumstances force a people to take exceptional measures. If there's a mockery or parody, it's simply that of a subset of the human condition.

As for what motivates the Amarnite to post in general and to write 5000 words in defense of Undertale - it's simple. It's called having fun. "But the tone is fully serious!" One might squeal, not getting it... How can one be both fully serious and have fun at the same time? This is perhaps *THE* distinction. Do you get it, or not? It's the source of all "meme magic." It's the best way to describe the public appearance of Trump, Milei, Bolsonaro and similar. They're having fun, they are simultaneously very unserious, yet deathly serious. This sort of "amused mastery" seems to only occur in "Amarnitical" individuals

[chevauchee]

I broadly reject psychoanalysis as a "science". It's a religious framework for a post-christian Faustian man in which the external universe as source of meaning is replaced by internal infinity. Like any religious system it might carry within it some fundamental truths or useful ways of seeing things but it is also prone to fundamental miscategorizations and is riddled with anticoncepts due to being used as a weapon by leftists for generations now.

"The Amarnite" as a type does not need any psychoanalysis to represent. It is enough to say that the archetype is the sort of man who was bred to function within high civilization and finds himself out of place in the world when the social structures he was adapted to exist in are absent. All it requires to make an "Amarnite" is a belief in the righteousness of his own being as opposed to the "nerd" or the "outcast" who is constantly yearning for normalcy or acceptance.

But I will say that doubling down on the belief in oneself as a higher type is hard to distinguish from mere resentment. It is a clear distinction to my eyes irl, but not so much online. The inability to ruthlessly purge those motivated by resentment is an inherent flaw of online community.

[Zed]

...

Alright, a little bit of Zed backstory.

I'm an oldtroon,and specifically one of SomethingAwful descent. Not just SA, but specifically Laissez Faire. The norwood? If you knew LF, then you would recognize him as our memetic progeny and our retarded child. As such, LF may or not may be familiar to you, but it probably should be. It was the leftypol of 2006-2009, and it was memetically upstream in a major way. The memes that emerged there trickled down into mainstream leftist politics over the course of a decade. Chapo Trap House? The dirtbag left? It all started there. Even a decade on, leftypol was recycling the memetic formulations LF pioneered. At the time I was a teenage leftist of the social democrat make, mildly sympathetic to Marx, but also to a few writers on reason.com.

LF was funny — it was transgressively funny. Posts about raping the kids of chuds (a word that didn't exist yet) and turning their kids gay? Check. Elaborate fantasies of torturing surbanites by shipping them to Africa? Check. Getting the FBI to raid lowtax's office over death threats to Obama? Check. The forum was an elaboration of raw hatred against the right —as it existed then. Of course our right was not your right. Our right… was neoconservatives bending over backwards to support gay wars in the middle east for Israel and oil. And after Bush, it was about shitting on Obama for being cotton-picking neoliberal Uncle Tom preoccupied with bailing out the banks. And it was also mocking libertarian retards for putting all their money in gold and fake ebux like bitcoin (how horribly that one aged). Every post was histrionic and hyperdramatic, pushing every boundary and edge we could.

The forum was deleted at least four times. It was to lowtax what /pol/ was to moot. Lowtax fucking hated it.

On LF — If you supported libertarian policies, they said you were a nazi. If you were social democrat, they said you were a neoliberal. If you were a communist, but thought Stalin's genocides of the Polish and the Ukranians were excessive? You were a reactionary. If you supported Maoism Third Worldism, you were insane but untouchable. And… you can't go further left than MTW and monkeysmashesheaven. It is the terminal end point of every leftist death spiral.

Not to imply there was one faction or one standard set of political beliefs. It was a feast for sharks, wherein the culture forced us to rip each other apart in the funniest ways possible. That was the nature of LF. It was autism, shitposting, and comedy all the way through. We had shit threads and we had miles long analyses of Deleuze, Adorno, and Derrida discussed in a serious fashion. We had the low and the high.

I loved it, even as a minor poster of little note. Yes, their utopia(s) often sounded like hell to me, in the way that some of the utopias posed here do. But I'm a creature of transgression and so seek always those spaces which are maximally edge — as a poster there, and as a poster here. I did not quite fit in there, I was too moderate and my sensibilities rendered me an outsider, and I ultimately got banned for being too much of a liberal. 

There is a sense that Amarna is singular, and it is in terms of the specific cultural features. But much of what I see here is a mirror of what I saw then (the quality average on Amarna is higher, but LF suffered from being substantially larger). Particularity in the natures of certain posters. An amusing resonance that would have made the posters on both forums uncomfortable. Perhaps you can take this as a complement though, LF did indeed become a cultural upstream of note. Unfortunately, that is a story has not been well documented — I remember one writer in Kantbot's zine addressing it. I wish I could find the link.

That said, mutas mutandis, my previous analysis of the amarnite could be modified to describe the average LF poster. Maybe that sounds a bit too much like ‘Horshoe Theory’ for some? (Sidenote: ‘Horshoe Theory’ predated LF, but LF first popularized the fucking meme, originally as a way to describe how certain anti-Israel posters were effectively Hitler-esque in their radicalism. Now boomer centrists repost it on facebook.)

For all that Horseshoe theory is now a meme suitable for an Elon audience — it is a robust heuristic in the domain of radical psychopolitics. Those who end up on the fringe always have more common with each other than anyone else. LF had dull shitposters of little value, and a few genuine idiosyncratic and schizophrenics that were breathtakingly original. Of course, that is true here as well. No universal truth can be stated about LF or Amarna, but patterns can be noted. My assertions on alienation are not based on reading tea leaves, but on the very confessions I've read from several posters here — either in public settings or in discord DMs. I always feel a kinship with such types, regardless of where I find them.

In sum, what Amarna is — deep down — is an example of a phenomena which emerges when you have a high number of transgressive autist outsiders riffing off each other. It is a comedic and intellectual spectacle ‐ and it captivates... So did LF.

As for your last remark: Was the undertale thread partly an exercise in comedy? Obviously. It is the funniest thread on this site. But don't dismiss it as ‘just comedy’. I believe the OP wrote to amuse, but he also wrote to support a thesis that was important to him.There are very real posts in it, where the posters psychologically expose themselves in a fascinating and even beautiful way. It is a great testament to the impact of media on our ideals and values, even as singular N=1 case study.

[turnip]

Most on the right are happy to make use of psychometrics, evolutionary psychology, etc. I gather that you're talking about social/cultural psychology and artistic analysis more generally. I do agree that there shouldn't be an instinctive aversion to these. Character/personality psychology is especially interesting to me when done well - I was thinking of doing a thread on that at some point. Psychology follows naturally from the recognition that there is an inner life and struggle of vital forces within someone.

With that being said, there are plenty of reasons to distrust psychoanalysis purely as a method and way of thinking about life. It embodies the worst impulse to interpret reality symbolically, it requires a flawed conception of the unconscious, it is interminable and doesn't lead anywhere other than to a kind of constipated self-denial, etc. Childhood experiences are important, the trouble is when we jump to saying that these are secretly acting at a distance on the present, such that you are acting out a whole unconscious drama.
This way of thinking is just bad conscience taken to its conclusion. There must be something hidden, a dirty secret. You don't have contempt for normies as a rational reaction to being subjected to a dysfunctional social order - you must secretly feel like a loser (and therefore wish for their recognition and validation). Only once you've learned to reinterpret yourself this way will you have become truly neurotic. But note that this neurosis requires very specific historical conditions before it can take hold, people must be adequately trained to see secret inverted meanings in life. By studying this you haven't really learned much about individual psychology. That never stops neurotics from turning around and elevating their obsessions into universal principles, hence e.g. the inability of gays or trannies to comprehend Greek eros.

On that point, psychologism, as I understand the original term, refers to a kind of psychological reductionism which tends to reduce all conflict to different psychological attitudes (it's all introverts vs extraverts, extreme/Authoritarian vs democratic personalities, etc.). This is simplistic and stupid, but more than anything, it is just a way of saying that the differences between people don't have any real significance, and you need therapy.

[chevauchee]

Many on the right do make use of psychology, and I consider that a failing. Evopsych should really be termed evolutionary behaviorism. It is useful to the extent that it makes useful predictions about how people act. Starting with genetic interest as a prior allows one to successfully model a lot of behavior.

“Psychology” really began in art, with the romantic novel through the postmodern. Inner turmoil and struggle became the subject of art, so inner turmoil has to be addressed in criticism of art. What I object to is using the flawed “science” of psychoanalysis with its terminology and framework, something that came into being a century after inward struggle became a subject of art, in art criticism. The “inward infinity” is a cultural and spiritual disposition (which is itself a sign of decline but we have to work with what we have) and the resulting “psychology” is a dead and formal religious rite on top of that disposition, which exists to replace the sacraments of confession and contrition. These latter taking far more precedence in Western Christianity than any other.

[obscurefish]

There is a sense that Amarna is singular, and it is in terms of the specific cultural features. But much of what I see here is a mirror of what I saw then (the quality average on Amarna is higher, but LF suffered from being substantially larger). Particularity in the natures of certain posters. An amusing resonance that would have made the posters on both forums uncomfortable. Perhaps you can take this as a complement though, LF did indeed become a cultural upstream of note. Unfortunately, that is a story has not been well documented — I remember one writer in Kantbot's zine addressing it. I wish I could find the link.

It's not discomforting at at all. Centrists who get squeezed into the "far right" are usually deficient in a necessary "Bolshevik" attitude.

[obscurefish]

Many on the right do make use of psychology, and I consider that a failing. Evopsych should really be termed evolutionary behaviorism. It is useful to the extent that it makes useful predictions about how people act. Starting with genetic interest as a prior allows one to successfully model a lot of behavior.

Evolutionary psychology doesn't make predictions, it's an attempt to capture human behavior within the paradigm of Darwinism. As a necessary consequence it excludes everything of real interest about people.

When we speak of "freedom of the will," what is it within us that wills? That's the interesting thing.

[obscurefish]

If want to approach the true psychological origins here, we need to look at baser thing,

This is the same metaphysical inversion that evolutionary psychology and Marxism attempt, explaining the higher in terms of the lower.

"It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art."

Politics is a higher thing than the satisfaction of private interests. You frame "Amarnites" as arising from the thwarted impulse to satisfy such desires but that is only because in our time all political claims are justified with ultimate reference to the private "pursuit of happiness". Politics can never be derived from the mere mechanical summation of private interests because politics is the creative articulation of rational principles that transcend the particularity of the private individual. Our system is one which attempts to provide the maximum security in the pursuit of individual happiness, but it does this at the expense of alienating man from political freedom.

"It follows from what I have just indicated that we can no longer enjoy the liberty of the ancients, which consisted in an active and constant participation in collective power. Our freedom must consist of peaceful enjoyment and private independence. The share which in antiquity everyone held in national sovereignty was by no means an abstract presumption as it is in our own day. The will of each individual had real influence: the exercise of this will was a vivid and repeated pleasure. Consequently the ancients were ready to make many a sacrifice to preserve their political rights and their share in the administration of the state. Everybody, feeling with pride all that his suffrage was worth, found in this awareness of his personal importance a great compensation. This compensation no longer exists for us today. Lost in the multitude, the individual can almost never perceive the influence he exercises. Never does his will impress itself upon the whole; nothing confirms in his eyes his own cooperation. The exercise of political rights, therefore, offers us but a part of the pleasures that the ancients found in it, while at the same time the progress of civilization, the commercial tendency of the age, the communication amongst peoples, have infinitely multiplied and varied the means of personal happiness. It follows that we must be far more attached than the ancients to our individual independence. For the ancients when they sacrificed that independence to their political rights, sacrificed less to obtain more; while in making the same sacrifice! we would give more to obtain less. The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of security in private pleasure."



So long as man is a social creature, then the man who cannot remake his own society is not free. Modern democratic society conceives of itself as a mechanical contrivance for achieving the maximum satisfaction of desires, but the more perfect this system becomes the more closely it approximates universal slavery.

"For the best men choose one thing above all — immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle."

[Zed]

If want to approach the true psychological origins here, we need to look at baser thing,

"It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art."

Politics is a higher thing than the satisfaction of private interests. You frame "Amarnites" as arising from the thwarted impulse to satisfy such desires but that is only because in our time all political claims are justified with ultimate reference to the private "pursuit of happiness". Politics can never be derived from the mere mechanical summation of private interests because politics is the creative articulation of rational principles that transcend the particularity of the private individual. Our system is one which attempts to provide the maximum security in the pursuit of individual happiness, but it does this at the expense of alienating man from political freedom.

Show me a 'political freedom' desired by the average person - and I will show you a base desire. The sewage that constitutes the large majority of human political thought emerges transparently and obviously from such things. Certain aesthetic constructions exempted, but these aspirations belong to the an ultra-slim minority of the populace, and (even here) most may be satiated privately within a classically liberal framework permitting private institutions/businesses.

The question of actionable practice both leads to (and reaffirms) this truth --- How would one go about starting a cult? How would one speak? In suitable hands, base desires are eggs to be inseminated and shaped in a desired direction. But then, what of the desires of the guiding hand which illuminate the whole enterprise?

This is the same metaphysical inversion that evolutionary psychology and Marxism attempt, explaining the higher in terms of the lower.

There is no inversion - it is the natural path of all science. In a rather clear way, the slow procession to the root is the goal of physics. Understanding of the simple and local yields onto the global. The definition of Gaussian curvature precedes the Theorem Egregium. Suprastructures (political systems, religions, ideologies) may be regarded as organisms and could indeed possess a will in their own right - but they operate in consistency with the wills of their components, even as they retain the capacity to 'shape' those.

As aside re marxism - the starting point of materialistic analysis was (mostly) correct. If it was flawed, the flaw lay in the fact that Marx failed to properly account for 'irrational' desires. One finds a more correct continuation in Deleuze and Land.

[anthony]

I believe that complex motivating underlying psychological phenomena are at the root of everything worthwhile humanity has ever done. From the first men who put on canine skins all the way to reaching the moon.

I ask in complete good faith, how do you square this with what has appeared to be your distaste for evopsych? When I consider what so-called "psychopolitics", as I understand it, attempts to explain—along with what others have already noted in this thread—I have trouble trying to differentiate it, to any significant degree, from the supposed general aspects of evolutionary psychology that are purported to be natural amongst humans, i.e., in-group preferences, hierarchy and leadership, cooperation to achieve a shared goal or desire, etc.

My distaste for evopsych could be called a distaste for every instance of evopsych I have so far personally encountered. Beyond the general truisms that they reframed with new data I see no unique power or utility in anything that has been presented to me as "evopsych", and lots to count against it. The view tends to create a myopic fixation with certain favoured abstractions which lead us further away from an understanding of people. Most importantly, it has no power to help us grasp individuals, but beyond that even it's not a very useful tool for broad or mass predictions. It's just junk.

Now, this psychopolitics of mine, does it allow you to read people? I don't know, I haven't tried to play Hari Seldon with it. But Mamoru Oshii can use these mental framings and approaches to create compelling pictures of individual people. I believe that his understanding of people and individuals is made finer and more interesting for his engagement with this.

Guest above said something to the effect of that all "psychopolitics" could just be considered "politics". I believe that "evopsych" as you've framed it is also just "politics". Call it all just "politics" if you'd like. We could rephrase my intentions in this thread without any of these terms quite comfortably. I believe that if we look below the specific desires of a particular individual we will in fact often find more and different things to what is expressed and explicitly desired. But this does not necessarily discredit or disprivilege any idea because of its place in all of this. This is just how people are. "Psychopolitics" ideas trace and map this human interior. Evopsych in my mind is often a refusal to.

[Zed]

Beyond my localized analysis of Amarnites above, I wrote a second post (which seemed worth its own thread: https://amarna-forum.net/t-Homosexuality...eath-drive) on another psychological archetype of the right. Both posts were motivated by this thread and my dissatisfaction with Adorno's model.

I'd like to be exhaustive and give a rather detailed psychoanalysis of the far right, but it doesn't feel that interesting to spend time time on the analysis of MAGA normies (if they can even be considered 'far right', or even 'right') or low-tier wignats/Daily Stormer fans. Though - QAnon boomers are probably worth writing about. Aside from that, the Fuentes crowd was covered elsewhere in a beautiful post by @Chud. 

As far as I can see, there are two other 'far right' archetypes that deserve consideration. The pseudointellectual rightist (most prominent on trad twitter, see Classical Theist's horrendous twitter), and the post-liberal(or post-libertarian) rightist who arrives at his frame either by purely autistic or humanist motivations.

(Autistic: Zero HP Lovecraft, Curtis Yarvin)
(Humanist: Dave Greene/The Distributionist, Chris Rufo).

I suspect it is amongst these groups where the Adorno model actually holds a certain degree of merit - but it is still clearly 'off'.

[obscurefish]

Show me a 'political freedom' desired by the average person - and I will show you a base desire.

Every thing the Sun shines on casts a shadow, but shadows aren't the cause of the Sun.

The question of actionable practice both leads to (and reaffirms) this truth --- How would one go about starting a cult?

By having genuine conviction.

There is no inversion - it is the natural path of all science. In a rather clear way, the slow procession to the root is the goal of physics. Understanding of the simple and local yields onto the global. The definition of Gaussian curvature precedes the Theorem Egregium. Suprastructures (political systems, religions, ideologies) may be regarded as organisms and could indeed possess a will in their own right - but they operate in consistency with the wills of their components, even as they retain the capacity to 'shape' those.

This way of thinking is perpetually impoverished because whatever it has got in hand immediately crumbles into dust. "What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" "A thing made of parts." Treading this path never leads man back to the source of the original objects of his inquiry.

"The evidence peculiar to this defective way of knowing – an evidence on the strength of which mathematics plumes itself and proudly struts before philosophy – rests solely on the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its material, and is on that account of a kind that philosophy must scorn to have anything to do with. Its purpose or principle is quantity. This is precisely the relationship that is non-essential, alien to the character of the notion."

As aside re marxism - the starting point of materialistic analysis was (mostly) correct. If it was flawed, the flaw lay in the fact that Marx failed to properly account for 'irrational' desires.

"In reality what distinguished Karl Marx from the millions who were affected in the same way was that, in a world already in a state of gradual decomposition, he used the unerring instinct of the prophetic genius to detect the essential poisons, so as to extract them and concentrate them, with the art of an alchemist, in a solution which would bring about the rapid destruction of the independent nations of the earth."

[Zed]

By having genuine conviction.

Conviction is generally a failing, as it obstructs the necessary corrections learned through experience. In most matters of social experience - reason triumphs over faith. The first question one should ask when building a business "What existing social desire is not met - and how may I devise a means of satisfying it?" The utility of faith? A belief in your own capabilities, and belief in the capabilities of those who the enterprise relies on. At no point does one allow themselves in the perfection of the product, but one remains adaptive to market feedback. Likewise, successful cult leaders know when to betray their espoused principles, and when to affirm them - the calculus is more analytic than spiritual. And in this case, conviction is the product sold.

Every thing the Sun shines on casts a shadow, but shadows aren't the cause of the Sun.

We're in agreement if ideology is the shadow.

This way of thinking is perpetually impoverished because whatever it has got in hand immediately crumbles into dust. "What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" "A thing made of parts." Treading this path never leads man back to the source of the original objects of his inquiry.

Many inquiries have no answer or the answers are poisoned in self-reference. What does it mean to be? Can you explain the concept of being in a way that isn't self-referential or conditional on the very notion of being? This might seem to reaffirm your point, but I claim that it doesn't. Thinking clearly involves recognizing the right questions, and accepting that many - even most - have no satisfying answers and we must be content to leave them to the poets or artists. Reducibility is not always possible, but we are endowed with pattern recognition skills that enable us to intuit it via correlations observed. If we see that a man is depressed when he is single, and that depression retreats on dating a woman - we can at least infer evidence for weak one-directional causality. If this way of thinking of impoverished - then so is the whole of western science.

[obscurefish]

What does it mean to be? Can you explain the concept of being in a way that isn't self-referential or conditional on the very notion of being?

"One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In this path are very many tokens that what is is uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable, and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one. For what kind of origin for it wilt thou look for? In what way and from what source could it have drawn its increase? ... I shall not let thee say nor think that it came from what is not; for it can neither be thought nor uttered that anything is not. And, if it came from nothing, what need could have made it arise later rather than sooner? Therefore must it either be altogether or be not at all. Nor will the force of truth suffer aught to arise besides itself from that which is not. Wherefore, justice doth not loose her fetters and let anything come into being or pass away, but holds it fast. Our judgment thereon depends on this: "Is it or is it not?" Surely it is adjudged, as it needs must be, that we are to set aside the one way as unthinkable and nameless (for it is no true way), and that the other path is real and true. How, then, can what is be going to be in the future? Or how could it come into being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of.

Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike, and there is no more of it in one place than in another, to hinder it from holding together, nor less of it, but everything is full of what is. Wherefore it is wholly continuous; for what is, is in contact with what is.

Moreover, it is immovable in the bonds of mighty chains, without beginning and without end; since coming into being and passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them away. It is the same, and it rests in the self-same place, abiding in itself. And thus it remaineth constant in its place; for hard necessity keeps it in the bonds of the limit that holds it fast on every side. Wherefore it is not permitted to what is to be infinite; for it is in need of nothing; while, if it were infinite, it would stand in need of everything.

The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which the thought exists is the same; for you cannot find thought without something that is, as to which it is uttered. And there is not, and never shall be, anything besides what is, since fate has chained it so as to be whole and immovable. Wherefore all these things are but names which mortals have given, believing them to be true — coming into being and passing away, being and not being, change of place and alteration of bright colour.

Since, then, it has a furthest limit, it is complete on every side, like the mass of a rounded sphere, equally poised from the centre in every direction; for it cannot be greater or smaller in one place than in another. For there is no nothing that could keep it from reaching out equally, nor can aught that is be more here and less there than what is, since it is all inviolable. For the point from which it is equal in every direction tends equally to the limits."

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Parmenides