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Title: Feral Aurora
Author: Lee Paxton
Date: 2013
Language: en
Topics: egoism, anti-civilization, thomas hobbes, individualist anarchism
Source: Retrieved on May 18th, 2015 from http://www.thanatosunbound.co.uk

Lee Paxton

Feral Aurora

Civilisation is the ‘highest’ achievement of man. And yet, in all its

supernatural grandeur, it is quite perverse, a distinctly human

disorientation. What do I here mean by ‘civilisation’? I mean an

amalgamation of all things noble: morality, selflessness, fidelity,

piety, hard work, unconditional love, purity, ‘progress’, etc. What this

means: Self-sacrifice, sublimation of the animal instincts, waiver of

the will, forfeit of freedom. One must love the beautiful, and only

noble things are beautiful! One must love the good, and only civility is

good!

“Renounce your shameful nature, man! Embrace the higher life!” Yes, the

prophets of civilisation bid me be ashamed of everything which

undermines it. I must constantly be in conflict with myself – my animal

nature and my ‘noble soul’, my devil and my angel. How at home

Zarathustra, Plato, and Valentinus would be in this milieu! For their

millennia old worldview, their misguided ethic, still stands proud as

the essence of civil-mindedness.

When a man fails to live up to the demands of civilisation, to its

transcendent, quasi-religious ideals, we call him an ‘animal’ or a

‘beast’, and hearing these words he is expected to repent, bow his head,

and self-flagellate. If the chimpanzee had the necessary powers of

comprehension, he would surely look upon this as most bewildering,

thinking to himself, “Why does this animal hate himself so? Why is he so

dedicated in his pursuit of not being what he is? He is the cleverest of

creatures, and his cleverness has made him stupid.”

Try telling a snake that it's ignoble for him to bite you. It's entirely

meaningless to him. For nature there is only creatures, their desires,

and their powers. Concepts such as morality are entirely rooted in

language, which allows us to create a world of mental abstractions.

However, abstract ideas only exist in the mind, not in nature, and are

created by us in the process of thinking, they do not pre-exist

thinking. The process of reification, in which we mistakenly ascribe

precedence to thoughts over the thinker, as if they have a ‘life of

their own’, takes its course through the varied manifestations of

'civilised thought', which is by degrees not in accordance with the

reality of the world. Civilisation is the product of man possessed,

where noble ideas hold sway, and people are their play-things; where the

houses men have built have become their prisons.

Everywhere impulsiveness is chastised and compulsion is preached. To be

a ‘good citizen’ is the noble way, to subordinate oneself to laws and

ideals. With what enthusiasm the progressives chant ‘citizens not

subjects’. And yet, what is the citizen but the subject who has pride in

his subjection?

At the same time the left-wing anarchists declare their opposition to

‘the state’ in all its manifestations, and then reel out their

‘universal statute on the equal rights of man’.[1] How better to

describe a state, I ask you, if not as an institution which enforces a

statute? This fact, that anarchy, as opposition to the state, cannot

possibly be reconciled with a system of radical equality, is the

Achilles’ heel of the left anarchists. Unwilling to admit the need for

force – and thus swap their black flag for a red one – they have no

answer to the question of how to realise their utopian vision. The great

dictatorial regimes were merely being practical when they undertook

campaigns of murder, imprisonment, and indoctrination.[2] An ideal, by

its nature, opposes the natural order of things. They say you can’t fit

a square peg into a round hole. Well, maybe you can, but you’re going to

need a hammer and a file.

It is surely time for the discontents, who no longer wish to live in

shame and servitude, to slough off, not only the vestiges of religion,

but of civility; to laugh the prophet from his podium, to stand fearless

before the hero, and to put the torch to their statutes.

But we who would be free find ourselves in a conundrum. For everywhere

on this earth that we may step we are followed by a bureaucrat with his

regulation book, watching our every move, ready to call forward an army

of enforcers at the first sign that we are ‘taking liberties’. And thus

we find ourselves unavoidably enemies of the state, for a state is a

centre of ‘legitimacy’. It is in its nature to dictate ‘valid freedoms’,

to determine for me what I can do and who I can be. It promotes and

defends liberty only insofar as it is ideologically sanctioned liberty –

which hardly deserves the name at all.

But, detractors, don’t misunderstand me. Nihilists like myself are not

the enemies of ‘society’, as such, for who would oppose friendship and

co-operation? No, I envisage a society, but one quite different from

what is currently understood by the term. One of spontaneous order,

created by men to serve themselves, in which our actions no longer

honour ideas, but honour our creative wills alone. One unopposed to the

potency of the individual. Social, and yet deeply individualistic,

personal, inasmuch as my community is mine – I choose it, it is not lord

over me. Order, but chaotic order – genuinely ‘free association’.

Post-normative – that is to say, rooted in will rather than abstract

moral-philosophical justification. No longer a sacred idol owed

obeisance, but a tool to be used for my satisfaction. A network of

wilful individuals, the terms of our community not dictated to us, but

decided by us, together. If we cannot come to terms, we simply do not

associate, we live in separation, for no statute claims dominion over

the whole land.

Thus we distinguish between ‘civilisation’ and ‘society’, as between

ideological order and spontaneous wilful order, as between the

idealistic and the naturalistic. We call for society with a small ‘s’.

We fight not for the glory of abstract ideals – not for the Good, the

Holy, the True, the Right - but for ourselves and that which is ours.

Man’s reign is over, for I am not Man, I am nothing but myself.[3] I

will no more pay tribute to the spooks of civilisation. I cast out the

demons which have possessed my ancestors. I wash my hands of the

sovereign phantasy.

They will call us barbarians, but they don’t know what that means. They

will imagine us drinking blood because they are lost in their myths that

to be untamed is to be savage and cruel. But nature is not cruel, it is

simply indifferent. Cruelty is a neurotic affectation, that is to say, a

product of unresolved tension. When impulses cannot be freely expressed,

when the libido cannot be satisfied, a man becomes frustrated, and that

frustration, when persistent, gives birth to resentment and anger

towards whatever is judged to be its source. To elicit suffering in that

source is the most potent way to manifest one’s might over it, to rule.

Civilised power is judged necessary in order to stop this sort of

behaviour. If one does not give too much thought to it, this makes

sense. But, with its absurd moral dictates, it actually ends up causing

even more ‘immorality’ than it set out to suppress. Is it not obvious,

for example, that a civilisation with stringent rules on sexual

morality, in which women withhold their sexual affections lest they

become ‘sluts’, will be more plagued with frustrated, resentful men

resorting to rape, or unconsciously switching their attention to more

passive sexual objects, such as children?

No doubt the more learned reader who wishes to discredit this

perspective will take recourse to the arguments of Thomas Hobbes, who I

would venture is, at least in his basic arguments, the political

philosopher of modernity par excellence. In a ‘state of nature’ lacking

any inherent justice, Hobbes proposed, men are destined to be constantly

in a state of war, for they will at first be jealous when they see

others with things they don’t have, and so take it by force, and second,

in fear of the first happening, will seek to dominate each other to

ensure safety. Because of this, people living in this ‘anarchic’ form of

society can never flourish. They will struggle for survival, subsistence

alone will be difficult, and advanced culture and industry will be

impossible.

In light of this problem he proposed that a sovereign power of which all

men are “in awe” is necessary to force civil behaviour. Only in fear of

this power can men be expected to respect each other. Men should accept

this because, whilst they will be required to give up certain freedoms,

yet it will bring about a peace that will improve and extend their

lives.

It is a clever argument, but one full of holes. If men have a tendency

to act as Hobbes claims, then why on earth would I put my trust in one,

or a group of them, to rule over me? They can swear their devotion to

protecting my ‘legitimate interests’ all they like, but I know that at

any second they could appropriate my possessions, take my wife as their

mistress, or order me shot. If I cannot trust my neighbour as my

neighbour, then to trust him when he puts on a crown and calls himself

‘King’ is patent foolishness. One would almost think that Hobbes was

entirely ignorant of history. If the thing we are to fear is the

arbitrary will of others, then to wholly surrender to the arbitrary will

of another is unthinkably stupid.

Even were we to imagine that the sovereign power was somehow

determinedly benevolent, the value of the system would depend on it

having global dominion. If competing sovereign powers exist – i.e.

nation states – then that state of war remains, and now it is not only

small-scale conflict between individuals or tribes, it is conflict

pitting millions against each other. The state tells me it has my

interests in mind, that under its watchful eye I need no longer fear my

neighbour, and then at the drop of a hat ‘we’ are at war with Iran, and

I am sent to get my body exploded in a ditch somewhere. But it’s

alright, I am dying for freedom (a most noble cause)! And the cherished

freedom I shall have the good fortune to exercise is the right to be a

fetid, mangled corpse.

I do not disagree with Hobbes that the ‘state of nature’, as they say,

is one rife with conflict. But this is something which cannot but

accompany life, insofar as life consists of a multitude of bodies, each

with their own will. The only workable road to a world truly without

conflict is the extermination of all life. I do not like it, but it

cannot be otherwise, and the utopians will forever find themselves

thwarted.

And so, if I am to be conquered, it will not be with my consent. I will

not sing a national anthem with a gun pressed to my head. And I will not

beg for my freedom, I will declare it! So I call for the dissolution of

civilisation. Iconoclasts and outlaws, rebels and untouchables,

discontents, defectors, reprobates, egoists, cynics, heretics,

neanderthals, expatriates, warriors, radicals, dissenters, frauds,

failures, dreamers, schemers, somebodies and nobodies: wedge your

fingers in the cracks, and pull...

[1] Something which, we should note, the ‘anarcho-capitalists’ and

libertarians are also guilty of in their reification of the

‘Non-Aggression Principle’.

[2] Pol Pot’s ‘Year Zero’ is perhaps the most lucid example of this, but

there are plenty to choose from.

[3] The most persistent of ideals is the most absurd one: that a self

should seek not its own well-being, but that of some other.