Motus Mentis

I’ve just read an article at Substack, written by one N.S. Lyons (whose bio tells us only that he or she is an “analyst and writer working in Washington, D.C.”), listing twenty reasons why none of us should harbor any hope that we might at last be emerging from the collective insanity of Wokeness that has brought America, and the West more generally, to the brink of collapse and civil war. The article is long, and detailed, and mounts such a massive and multifaceted argument, under twenty headings, that it is perhaps the most potent “blackpill” I have yet to run across in print.

I won’t summarize it here — it’s too sprawling for that — but you can go and read the whole thing for yourself. The bullet-points are as follows:

1. One does not simply walk away from religious beliefs.
2. The void of meaning still hasn’t been filled.
3. Social atomization hasn’t reversed.
4. Atomization is probably the inevitable byproduct of liberal modernity.
5. The information revolution is still reverberating.
6. There is no authority.
7. Political parties can’t choose their policies.
8. Majorities don’t matter.
9. Personnel is policy.
10. All the institutional high ground is still occupied.
11. Long marches are long.
12. Culture wars are generational wars, and the young are woke as hell.
13. The youth are still coddled and mentally broken.
14. Elite overproduction is still in overdrive.
15. “Wokeness” is still required by law.
16. Money is still power.
17. The opposition is still only political.
18. Partisanship is still getting worse, and Wokelash 2.0 is entirely possible.
19. None of the levers of power have changed or will change hands.
20. Leviathan has a’woken.

As I said, the sheer mass of the argument given in this bleak summation is impressive, and it would be easy — as the author actually suggests that we do! — to despair. But, as I’ve written elsewhere there is never any upside to despair; there’s a reason that Hope is one of the cardinal virtues. Despair is not only useless, but it destroys the soul, and as such it is rightly considered a sin.

Much of what this article describes is undeniably true, and I’ve been saying myself — for long years now — that as a nation and a civilization we have blundered our way into such a mess that very painful consequences are inevitable. I have had, for a long time, no doubt whatsoever that things are going to get much, much worse, at a faster and faster pace, and that what we need to work at is to cherish and preserve what we can from the coming collapse.

Do I agree, then, with the author of this article that the juggernaut of Wokeness is so all-powerful that nothing can stop it, and that all we have left is to despair? Not at all, and here’s why: because the insane, parasitic, cryptoreligious ideology that has seized the Western mind is built, from top to bottom, on a hallucinatory denial and rejection of objectively existing reality: of all the lessons of history, the stubborn truths of human nature and natural law, and even the simplest facts of biology and economics. Moreover — because, by its own nominalist and materialist axioms, it has nothing better to offer — it must replace the highest human yearnings for transcendent truth, meaning, beauty, and purpose with a low and shabby telos built on little more than our basest animal urges.

Such a regime may last a while, and it may do colossal damage while it lasts (it already has!) — but it cannot win. It is aligned against all truth, and against our nature, so in the end it must fail and crash. And when it does, when the storm is over and the flood subsides, we will begin again.

* * * * * * *

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!