What is Life? It is the process of actualization of the possible. Actualization — and thus action. Life has its center of gravity on the side of action, and not on the side of abstract thought. For purposes of action, then, there is an order of rank which places practical skill above theorizing. It is this which makes Machiavelli more valuable politically than Plato, Thomas More, Campanella, Fourier, Marx, Edward Bellamy or Samuel Butler. He wrote of politics as it is, the others as it should be, or as they wanted it to be.
It is fairly well known that nothing can be proved by violence — this is because the two spheres of abstract thought and action, truths and facts, do not intersect. It is not as well understood that the reverse is also true, that no violence can be done by proof; in other words, effects cannot be gained in the world of action by truths.
Merely to start to try to actualize an abstract theory is to abandon it. The net result of the attempt to impose a way of thinking where it is not appropriate is bungling. There is no choice between a chemistry-artist and a physics-artist, but only between a good artist and a poor one. To approach a mechanical problem as though good and evil are involved in it is to prepare a failure. Each aspect of life yields its secrets only to the method adapted to it. Politics always has refused to give any power to the man who is out to “reform” it according to a morality. Nor can it be understood by trying to impose foreign methods of thought upon it. Politics is the opposite of abstract; derivatively abstract means “drawn away from” — away from what? — from action, reality, facts.[bungler is the perfect word for whats passed as politics in DC over the last 43 years, with the final nonsense called build back better. dc ]
This whole outlook is one of the fact side of the human being. This work is concerned only with action, because the Age of Absolute Politics in which it appears is an age of action. No one has ever said politics should be immoral — but all political thinkers have said that politics is politics. Questions of should are on the other side of the soul, and are not treated here. The fact that politics and morality do not intersect is shown by the example of the Second World War. The American half of the extra-European coalition against Europe stated most decisively that it was fighting for Christian morality, yet after the war it carried out the attempt to exterminate physically the Culture-bearing stratum within its jurisdiction in occupied Europe. Beyond this, mass-starvation and looting were employed to destroy many millions of Europeans, physically, economically. The example is not unique: the victorious powers after the First World War had carried out a starvation blockade of the defeated enemy after the War, and that War also was conducted by those victorious powers in the name of Christian morality. [ age of absolute politics= 1917 Russia on steroids worldwide. dc ]
In the practice of politics, a moral approach can only result in inefficiency or disaster. It is destructive in exact proportion as it is taken seriously.
If the morality is used quite cynically, as propaganda to increase the brutalization of a war, it distorts war and politics in the direction of bestiality. [ you know, like showing babies with their heads chopped off, real advanced souls there...NOT. dc]
In the 20th century, politics reconquers once more its own realm. The motivation of politics is no longer derived from economics. Law, technics, economics, social organization — all reflect the great realities of politics. In this last formative age of a great Culture, which will last through the 21st century, the motivation of the perpetual power-struggle is supplied by the unity of the Western Civilization itself. The real front of the wars of this age is simply Europe versus anti-Europe. There are border areas, like those between Russia and Europe, like the northern countries of South America. Each side has its allies: the white populations strewn over the world belong to Europe; the Asiatic distorting elements of cohesion and power in the various Western countries belong to non-Europe. It is the struggle of a positive against a negative, of creation against destruction, of Cultural superiority against the envy of the outsider. It is the unrelenting battle against the master of yesterday by his liberated slaves, burning with vengeance for their centuries of slavery.[ the author was from Europe, most likely rolling over in his grave over the current condition of Europe, and his talk of the Western Civilization lasting through the 21st Century looks like a pipedream at this point in 2023. dc]
These wars of course will be true unlimited wars, like the Crusades, and not agonal like intra-European wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. They will be correspondingly absolute in their means and in their duration. For example, prisoner-of-war usages developed in the Western Civilization on considerations of humanitarianism and military honor. After the Second World War Russia abolished the first of these bases, by starving and enslaving prisoners, and America abolished the second by hanging prisoners-of-war en masse, and ignoring the Hague Conventions in its postwar occupation of Europe.
The coming wars will thus revive the older practices of enslaving and killing war prisoners, and remove the protections hitherto extended to the civilian population. Instead of the codified military honor of a High Culture, honor will eventually become a matter of inner personal imperative, and the individual will decide for himself, the importance of his decision depending upon his position. It is not dishonorable per se to kill prisoners, but only if they surrender and give up their arms on condition their lives are to be spared, as the European soldiers and leaders did who were later hanged by the Americans after the Second World War.
In the last act of our grand Western Culture-drama, the idea of the Culture itself demonstrates its unimpaired vigor — Destiny is always young, says the philosopher of this Age — by placing itself in the center of Life and defining all men as friends or enemies according as they adhere to it, or oppose it. Culture-politics is the end of the train of religion-politics, family-politics, and faction-politics from the Crusades to the Reformation, dynasty-politics to the Vienna-Congress, national-politics and economic-politics to the Second World War. The crisis of Rationalism subsides. Its attendant phenomena grow colorless, more forced, and one by one they fade away: Equality, Democracy, Happiness, Instability, Commercialism, High Finance and its power of Money, Class War, Trade as an end in itself, Social Atomism, Parliamentarism, Liberalism, Communism, Materialism, Mass-Propaganda. All these proud banners trail finally in the dust. They are nothing but the symbols of Reason’s daring and bold, but hopeless attempt to conquer the kingdom of the Soul.
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1 comment:
I think they're going to have a power outage and all their super-sophisticated digital surveilly-master-control stuff is going to fold up like a cheap kite.
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