Mass murder is no unintentional inevitability, much less a mistake; it is always the logical and even deliberate conclusion of utopian thinking. However, to explain why, it is first necessary to touch on personality disorders.
Possibly the most perplexing paradox I have come across is that of the self-loathing narcissist, though if you think about it for longer than the short-term memory of a goldfish, it’s not really much of a paradox at all. If you’ve ever read the original myth of Narcissus, then you will already be aware that the titular character after whom the personality disorder is named did not fall in love with himself, he fell in love with his reflection. Narcissists do not love themselves, they love their image, and this is where we get to the two types: literal or physical narcissism, and metaphorical or metaphysical narcissism. The former is nothing more than vanity, but the latter manifests as an obsession with one’s character, or rather, the image of one’s character. The metaphysical narcissist is obsessed with being perceived as a good person, so they inevitably attach their identity to some feel-good cause or utopian ideology. Any attempt to bring such a person down to reality is treated like a personal attack, so they will attempt to make any interlocutor feel bad for trying to reason with them. Such a person is like a black hole, sucking all the joy out of any room they deign to defile with their presence while distorting reality around them. Mind you, don’t expect a deep dive into this type of mind here; this isn’t my wheelhouse, if you’re interested in personality disorders and abusive relationships, read Hacking Narcissism by Nathalie Martinek. All I’ve provided is the bare minimum necessary to understand the utopian mindset. Granted, the metaphysical narcissist is simply the cult leader, and most utopians are simply cult members.
By now you may have noticed that utopians are all about destroying old things: de-constructing old ideas, dismantling old institutions, demolishing old edifices, and most concerning of all, daemonising the people defending the old stuff, even if those people outnumber them. I used to think that genocide apologists were rare among collectivists, but as it turns out, they are the norm, rather than the exception; most simply aren’t particularly vocal about it unless pressed on the issue, for reasons that ought to be obvious. This topic has been stewing in my mind for a while now, but the reason that I decided to finally write this piece was because of a certain work of fiction that I was made aware of by the Substacker who has adopted the mantle of Yuri Bezmenov: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. I skimmed the Wikipedia article about the entire trilogy, and it looks like a fascinating read. More books to add to the pile!
The hatred of humanity exhibited by the two main characters is something I have seen many times before, and in every single instance, it has been exhibited by demoralised collectivists, never by optimistic collectivists or by demoralised individualists. The former seek the end of history, whereas the middle merely piss and moan that society is run by “the wrong people,” and the latter simply bow out of society altogether like Ted Kaczynski. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “body bags for black pills,” doesn’t it? Only people who watch the same YouTube channels that I do are going to know what that’s a reference to, but I don’t care.
Even critics of utopian thinking or collectivism in general frequently miss the inherently destructive nature of such ideas, or if they don’t, they assume way too much good faith on the part of the utopians. Carl Benjamin, for example, once said “the socialists don’t care that this won’t work; they think it will and they feel morally justified because they are striving for utopia,” an excellent take, mind you, but he really should have left out the “they think it will” bit, because what “works” or “does not work” is immaterial. To the ideologue, what is morally right is more important than what is factually correct, by their own admission. For another example, as of this writing, I have not yet watched a certain video by Karlyn Borysenko in which she claims to “fact-check James Lindsay,” but I have a stinking suspicion that I already know what it’s about. Lindsay is brilliant, don’t get me wrong, but he occasionally makes a mistake, and those of you who are avid viewers of TIKhistory like yours truly are probably aware of a big one:
Communism didn’t “fail” in Cambodia, it succeeded, and the death toll shows that. They want to accelerate the process of the “end of history,” so they introduce the state police [sic](should be “secret police”), gulags, mass starvation; these things are part of the process, not a “mistake.” This is where I disagree with James Lindsay, who said these things were “mistakes,” but by reading someone like Stalin, their intent becomes obvious. – Lewis Barton
Ve must implement a totalitarian state und rid ze velt of ze uzeless eaterz in order to bring about human instrumentality. – Klaus Schwab, probably
I may have made up that second quote, but it’s not too far removed from what Schwab and his heir apparent, Yuval Harari, are advocating for; I simply added in a cheeky homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you’ve ever watched it, you know the reason. If you haven’t, check out my article on mysticism in animé, I explain the reference. Anyway, back to being serious!
Utopians are, by their very nature, totalitarian. This is not the result of modernity, they have always been this way. The optimists are the ones who think that humanity evolved to be communists, have lost their way, and can be brought back to the light. The pessimists are the ones who think that humanity is well and truly lost, because they have come to accept what individualists have been telling them all this time: collectivism is incompatible with human nature. Regardless of how strong kinship may be, humans objectively do not have a hive mind. Because dialectical materialism is the beating heart of most (if not all) utopian ideologies, to the utopians, their vaunted idea is more important than reality. Where the scientific realist sees a contradiction between objective reality and an idea, it is the idea that needs to change:
Whatever is inconsistent with the fact, no matter how fond of it we are, must be either discarded or revised. – Carl Sagan
However, dialectical materialists don’t think this way, because according to them, we live in a material reality, rather than an objective reality. To them, there is nothing that cannot be changed. Reality is whatever we make it, because it’s all in our minds. They believe that we are trapped in an illusion, and people like me (as well as everyone I’ve tagged and quoted thus far) are the archons of the demiurge trying to keep the souls of the righteous imprisoned. Another way to put it is that they think we are living in the Matrix, and people like me are the agents of the system. I even had one person claim that I’m “running cover for the Jews,” by exposing the eschatological nonsense at the heart of Gnosticism. Very funny, Rolo, and oh by the way, old-school Gnostics aren’t fighting the system, they’re surrendering to it. The point of this is that the demoralised utopians, the ones who realise that their “perfect” system can never be a reality, simply want to destroy reality so they never have to accept that their sacred idea is nothing but a towering pile of babble, bollocks, and bullshit. They hate human nature, therefore humanity itself, and some even hate nature itself.
I have more of these receipts… many more. However, not all of them are quite so grandiose or mystical, some are from people have a more personal problem that they are simply blowing out of proportion.
One of the core tenets of Marxism is the abolition of the nuclear Judeo-bourgeois family. Having come from something of a fucked-up family myself, I can certainly see the appeal, and it should come as no surprise that the people who advocate for abolishing the family either come from abusive families, or were the problem children that their relatives simply gave up on… like Karl Marx himself. Therefore, because their families failed them, the utopians believe that family itself is a failed system, and therefore must be abolished. This is nothing new, incidentally, in fact, this is the case in Plato’s Politeia, a.k.a. “The Republic,” which, I will remind people, is a translation that I hate, because “republic” is a Latin word. Anyway, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Politeia, much like 1984, is SATIRE, not a fucking instruction manual! Not that I’m necessarily defending Plato here, his philosophy is the basis of a lot of modern mysticism (e.g. Theosophy), in stark contrast with Socrates and Aristotle, who are both central figures in rationalist philosophy. Anyway, whether it be the overbearing control or mere lack of support from the abusive family, or the refusal to give in to the problem child’s sense of entitlement, the family abolitionist appears to be projecting the failure of one family onto all families. Similarly, the anti-capitalist correctly identifies the problems with one business, and then paints all businesses with the same brush: predatory multinational oligopolies exist, therefore the activities of the sole proprietor must be restricted in order to prevent them from becoming wealthy enough to one day do the same. When someone utters the mantra “capitalism has failed,” the proper response is not to immediately jump to the defense of the free market, but instead make one simple demand: DEFINE CAPITALISM.
I understand the desire to “fix” the problems with society, I really do; in fact, that’s part of the reason I became an engineer. Engineering is all about problem solving, but what applies on the shop floor also applies to human society: some things cannot be changed, so your project will have to adapt to the conditions you are working with. If you design a machine that only works if built out of unobtanium, the solution isn’t to find or synthesise unobtanium, but to alter the design so that it can be built out of materials that you can actually obtain. Similarly, the political theorist must devise a system that works with human nature as it actually is, not one the requires the fundamental transformation of humanity. Disagree with human nature all you want, but changing it is unrealistic, and even if it something can be done, always ask yourself if it should be done… but enough about gain-of-function research. Point being that a lot of efforts to “help everyone” end up helping no-one in the long term, and sometimes, the best thing you can do to “help” is to simply stop meddling. Remember, utopians do not care about practicality, their version of moral consequentialism is completely backwards, so the way to get them to stop is to call their vaunted idea what it really is: evil. This holds true even at a small scale.
Anyway, I’m done with the maddened ramblings taking pot shots at idealists for a while. Next article will be some constructive criticism aimed in an entirely different direction (toward two of the people I mentioned earlier, in fact), and after that, I’ll have a history lesson for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see what the hell my guinea fowl are making noise about this time, and after that, I need to check a batch of Malbec fermenting in my kitchen. Au revoir!
Sasha V's Sesquipedalian Soliloquies 