The Self is the First Principle
The Heart of a Political Sociopathy
It all comes down to this: self-protection, self-preservation, selfishness, no matter the cost to others.
It is the enforced banishment of potential discomfort, the avoidance of challenges, the creation of a world in which one cannot be harmed, in which one cannot even allow for the possibility of obstacles.
That is the first principle of the equitarian, the progressive, the woke.
And tis is what is driving the cultural upheaval.
The specific projects and plans and canards and demands are mere emanations - the shadows of the primal inexorable drive of selves unmoored to others, of selves that place self-preservation, self-promotion, and self-protection at the crux of their being.
That sociopathological core pursuit is what Marcus Aurelius would see as the defining essence, the first principle, the answer to the question of the why of the what has been occurring over the past decade:
“What is it in itself, and by itself, according to its proper constitution? What is the substance of it? What is the matter, or proper use? What is the form, or efficient cause? What is it for in this world, and how long will it abide?” (from Meditations)
The individual actions of the woke uberclass can be perceived as being symbolic of a new religion, as an intentional redefinition of the culture for personal benefit, as a manifestly delusional state that evinces mental illness, but those specific and discrete actions could spring forth for any number of reasons, from any number of sources.
Woke has been called a religion – that is true as far as it goes. Woke has been called the natural outcome of the familial and societal changes of the past two generations – that is true as far it goes. Woke has been called a mass psychopathy, a snowballing of Cluster B personalities – that is true as far as it goes.
But each of those explanations are limiting as they do not get to the essence of the Aristotelian “primum movens,” or prime mover or, especially apt in this case, “that which moves without being moved.”
The prime mover, in this case, is pure overriding self-preservation – everything stems from that base, creating a psychological imperative to build a permanent cocoon in which to inhabit and to obliterate anything that threatens that ultimately safe space.
And the creation of that cocoon, that womb is akin to a central seed from which an utterly new world will be born.
Tom Lehrer, a Harvard (when that actually mattered) math professor wrote a song that encapsulates the terror of moving from college to real world:
Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife
Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
The lyrics point directly to the dread that can exist in a person, or group of people, suddenly facing a new reality. But progressives know how that can be avoided, shunted aside, dodged, safely ignored: just drag their own reality along with them and force others to inhabit it.
All humans have an instinct for self-preservation and most humans have the default mode of following the path of least resistance, or act in a Newton’s first law fashion of a body at rest tending to stay at rest.
But these base facts have been amplified by a lifetime of participation awards, of fourth grade graduations, of play dates arranged by broken-bladed helicopter parents, of acceptable physical isolation through social media , of scoreless sports, of receiving endless psychological affirmation, of being told both to not stand out and that they are unique, of being at the center of the obsessive cultural fixation on youth, and of never being treated as children or even humans but only as customers.
That is why - not just the currently infantilizing experience of college – the seemingly incomprehensible and rage fueled movement is so difficult to fend off: it is based in the separate all-encompassing only reality they have ever known.
The socio-political terraforming occurring now is the manifestation of that fact.
The protective imaginary friends, those conjured up keepers away of the monsters under the bed, will now live for eternity, adding another psychological underpinning to the first principle of self-preservation: nothing done in the name of safety can be wrong and the razor blade has been replaced by an eternal Mobius strip of a slip n’ slide –an infinitely tempting mindless, risk free ride of life.
For those inside, for those adolescent creators, totalitarianism of the woke reality is very comfortable, just as being on the inside of any dictatorial regime has ever been. This is in part because all questions regarding core beliefs and functions are settled: remember, not one Nazi bureaucrat who attended the 1942 meeting in Wannsee that set the holocaust in motion even momentarily wondered about the immorality of seeing Jews as unpersons – all of the discussion focused on creating legalistic cover and other matters of logistics.
That type of the absolute settling of central motivations and imperatives – no matter how awful - to create specific real world outcomes is exactly what is happening today, what is being exuded from the first principle, the unmovable mover of delusional self-regard and absolute and laser-focused self-preservation, self-enhancement, and self-aggrandizement.
The individual plans and programs and demands and protests must be seen as part of the whole, the ceaseless attempt to terraform society, a society that must replace the existing one in toto for it to function properly. There can be no dissent brooked or the edifice collapses:
“(They) must by necessity reject history – nothing before terraforming can be remembered, the before time, the long long ago must be erased because those left living in the new world cannot have any frame of reference for comparison.
Terraformers need a clean slate.
In this process, some aspects are more fundamental - more foundational - than others.
For example, the idea of equity (of outcome) supplanting equality (of opportunity) is a foundational cultural modification that must be made for the new world to exist.
Without equity, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” cannot exist and not just for acronymical reasons. Imagine “Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion” – you can’t because equality of opportunity is not about enforced diversity and inclusion while equity, by definition, is.
In fact, equity of outcome is crucial for the delusion that holds together the new world, the promise of guaranteed sustenance and happiness for all. Of course, equity will not apply equitably and it will mean very different things for those who do not acquiesce to the emerging reality.
This process will metastasize as the societal structure is converted into a million-layered set of Russian nesting dolls that is, in truth, even more as “un-equity” than today.
In education, no new thoughts are allowed, very few old thoughts are tolerated, people happily demand to be lectured to rather than participate in creating their emerging self, and at higher levels of schooling shout and keen to be treated like equitable children .
Curricula no longer exists as it once did; the teachers, for example, have forced the elimination of testing – for their own benefit: who wouldn’t want a job that cannot be appraised objectively? The proliferation of doorstop degrees – an Ed.D is, in almost all cases, not a sign of being a good educator but of being able to check boxes and build a self-preserving bureaucracy – shows that in the new world, it is the credential, not the talent, that is supreme.
Again, this all comes from the necessarily unquestionable self-preservation as questions threaten to change the existing self and real personal growth becomes hated by those who want to build a resin-preserved steady-state existence.
Hence the censorship regime. Government, “private” companies, think tanks, foundations, schools, non-profits and the media, once the guardian of unfettered speech, all spend massive amounts of time, energy, and mostly-public money on the effort to make sure no questions are asked, no other interpretation is allowed to be discussed.
That is why even having to debate the issue means the woke terraformers are winning– unfettered speech was once such a bedrock affirmation of freedom that it was seen as unquestionable and, if censorship reared its ugly head (Alien and Sedition Act, Palmer Raids, McCarthyism) it would be eventually beaten back and the event would then be viewed upon with disgust and embarrassment evermore.
Censorship specifically takes a number of its core “selling points” directly from the first principle, specifically the matter of safety. Note how new reality discussions are nearly always couched in words like “safety,” “protection,” “threat,” “expertise,” and, of course, mis dis and malinformation.
Has anyone heard of something mis, dis, or mal ever being good? Of course not, and those terms also have the advantage of being simple to evoke and claim, unlike actually having to prove something is false to call it untrue.
Surveillance goes along quite well with censorship as to be forewarned is to be forearmed, to be prepared, to have the talking points ready just in case people not on board are discovered to be coloring outside of the lines.
Both meld like intertwined fingers with social media and its strength – along with the shield of anonymity - of making the instant mob possible. Someone is found to say something problematic – surveillance leading to censorship – and the double fist of the the mob can be brought within minutes.
As with many other revolutionary movements, getting inside the halls of power is key, hence the attraction of government or foundation or academic work to the typical progressive. And once the foot is in the door, that door can be flung open to admit as many of the like-minded – and block those independent selves – as possible.
For example, government agencies (and private companies) around the nation invoked employee COVID shot mandates during the pandemic response. Necessary from a health standpoint?
No.
An incredibly convenient, we cannot miss this opportunity, way to weed out people in an organization that are not by nature utterly compliant and may cause a ruckus in the company or the new world of the future?
Perfect.
The pandemic response – like an evil superhero’s dose of empowering radiation – accelerated a whole host of tailor-made opportunities. First, the physical self-protection/separateness (like masks and distancing and such) that could not be questioned, only enforced, and which was done gleefully by the woke/progressive crowd.
Here, too, appeared the hands of censorship and surveillance, used not only against specific people but society in general. Self-protection and powerlessness are antithetical - the woke were able to enhance their self-protection by creating a sense of powerlessness in everyone else.
Personal agency – as it inherently implies personal, not group, power - has also become a victim of the inexorable tide.
Things as prosaic as car speed governors and kill switches and centrally monitored vehicle miles traveled taxes (all sold under the brand of safety,) to profound reductions in freedom and responsibility (more freedom = more responsibility, less freedom = less responsibility – that’s why it’s attractive,) to efforts to destroy voting systems, to modify the idea of currency, and to create a society that is ideally rental: all radiate from the creation of the new reality.
A rental society will also care less about property crime, which will make enacting “criminal justice” easier as there will be less to lose. These efforts are not about helping victims or reforming criminals - they are about creating a societal desperation that will lead it to reach out to the supposed solutions the woke offers.
Voting is dangerous because it might not go the way they like and renting is so much easier than owning because you have none of those pesky connections to “your” property – modifying both standpoints are crucial to the new world.
Democracy, say the woke elite, the socialist socialite statists, is ours as we define it - a crucial self-protection assertion as it pays lip service to the idea of equity but ensures that that equity of power is only distributed amongst a chosen few, amongst the cocooned .
Societal medicalization is another key aspect of the new reality. If “there’s a pill for that,” for everything then, again, the world is simplified under the rubric of healthy safety. The beginning of life can be controlled/influenced by the state cocoon – don’t want that inconvenient child? Ok – as can the end of life be – feeling sad and the pills haven’t helped? Here’s the way out: assisted suicide.
For example, the practice of euthanasia has grown exponentially in the past decade and Canada is considering allowing people to end their lives, at government expense, even without having anything medically wrong with them.
Medicalization is also at the heart of the trans debate, a debate the woke see as vital to win so as to embed in the public their idea that the body is a mere plaything and that any modifications are ethical as long a person says they want it.
Inside the woke cocoon the heteronormative is disdained, in part because it is seen as a marker of not being fully committed to the progressive drive. Inside the cocoon, any and all bodily vicissitudes and quirks and differences are encouraged as long as they remain in the realm of the physical and do not cross into mental, the psychological, into thinking different.
Why is this so important, why does it matter what someone else does to their body?
Because that can easily become the allowance of doing something to someone else’s body.
Throughout this process, the woke spinners have relied on the idea of “oh, this is just one rare thing that’s not that big a deal and it’s not as if…” when pitching societal modifications to a leery public.
The slippery slope, as it were, claimed repeatedly not to exist by those pushing society down the slope - in fact exists in every cultural aspect of life today.
Imagine what is acceptable – and unacceptable - now versus a decade ago; there are too many examples of “no, it’s just this one little change…” to point to.
Imposed language changes, political offerings, and cultural touchmarks have all been modified by progressives in one direction – their own.
Climate concerns show that process in real time. First it was global cooling, then global warming but when that, from a PR standpoint, didn’t pan out it became climate change, a perfect term as it is impossible to argue because, by definition, the climate is and always has been changing at some level or another.
A specific example of this is the matter of natural gas. A few years ago it was touted as a perfect replacement for oil and coal – now those same groups have deemed it just as evil. Stove bans, terrifying tales of invisible fumes in the home, environmental degradation through drilling, etc. are all used as excuses to move to an entirely electric world.
Electricity is omni-present, omni-plentiful, omni-pleasant, and omni-purposeful to the point that nothing else is ever needed. And here is the real point for the base drive:
But imagine a literally all-electric world – you are reduced, confined, required to get the energy you need to live from one source, one centrally (by necessity) controlled source that everything you own runs on, one centrally controlled source that can cut the power to your specific home anytime it wants.
Conceivably – see China/social credit systems/central bank digital currency/”you’ll own nothing and be happy” and smart city concepts – that reasons for the power being cut will move beyond just being bill-related but conduct-related. The power of energy as a social control level is nearly limitless.
An electric world is a controllable world that fits nicely and has the advantage of pushing all of the pesky environmental destruction out of the sight of the progressive caring class..
The nine-year-old cobalt miners in the Congo are not only less important than those who inhabit the gleaming first world bubble, they are also eminently sacrificable as a part of drive to reduce global population – the new world can only be so big.
The use of the term “existential threat” is an overwhelmingly important tool for the terraformers.
First, it dovetails perfectly with the first principle of self-preservation: a global threat is, by definition, a personal threat.
And a threat to everyone else and afraid people are complaint people.
Real existential threats are omnipresent, transgenerational, and terminal. None of what is being touted qualify as such. However, refusing to accept the notion of those existential threats is an existential threat to the creation of the new world.
One of the most dangerous – and vulnerable – radiance from the from the new world effort is how it must be created and then preserved in its totality, hence the literal impossibility of engaging in rational discussions regarding specific items of concerns.
Medicalization, censorship, surveillance, subversion of actual democracy, imposition of strictures in the name of safety, a complete modification of the physical and economic environments, the drive towards equity, language control, the shift from a “hard cases make bad law” legal concept to “any case must make new law,” the destruction of personal agency, responsibility, and freedoms, the future fear being prepared for the next disaster or plague, the movement of actual power to always publicly unaccountable, often international groups, the cult of the expert, the lowering and/or abandoning of educational and ethical standards, and the general dehumanization of the human being, the discrete individual, are all part and parcel of the creation of self-preservation cocoon.
And all are easily refutable, destroyable on their own – and therefore, like a crack in a dam, capable of bringing the entire edifice down - if logic and reason and can be applied, if a sense of history can be brought to bear (hence the destruction of history.)
The “we’re doing this for own good – how can you not appreciate it?” claim must be dismissed immediately and irrevocably – the playing field cannot be ceded.
The rage of the three-year-old – or the confronted addict - that is vented must be ignored. That rage does, however, signal panic and desperation which could be an indicator to how close to the inner layers of the truth the opposition is getting.
Obviously, the past has seen its share of equivalent events and trends, but the shapers of the new reality specifically and intentionally poisons the usual “predators” of their bad ideas – nuance, history, research, reason, time to reflect, reliable sourcing, and actual, not deconstructivist, proper context - in order to destroy them before they have the chance to propagate (see social media mobs) and threaten them.
Personal “truth” is replacing the truth, the cudgel of humorless mockery has replaced replaced thoughtful discourse, and the will of the collective (as driven and determined by the cocoon) has taken nearly absolute precedence over the needs of the individual.
But once that first serious crack appears the work to disassemble the rest can begin as, while it based on a first principle, it is a delusion and a delusion cannot stand the light the real, the actual.
In other words, if the premise is ignored, the truth can begin.
The rejection of the woke new world can only begin when its emanations are treated as the selfish delusions they are. There can be no quarter given, there can be no hiding, there can be no compromise as what are seen as bugs and glitches – see Google’s Gemini AI consensus machine - and manifest insanities are not seen by the cocoonists as problems, but specific features of the effort.
It is impossible to shame the shameless and the inherent cognitive dissonance is used as a strong defense to get those trying the argue rationally to shake their head in disgust and walk away, assuming they will “come to their senses” one day.
The woke take a holistic, a whole of culture, whole of government approach to its effort – it is ceaseless because it must be ceaseless to exist – they will not, they cannot, “come to their senses.”
Therefore, the opposition, the attempt to hold back and turn back, to destroy the delusion must be whole of society and similarly ceaseless. For example – and this is rather prosaic, but don’t just refuse to give your pronouns on a form – ask why the question is there.
Ask your local government people why trans people go the front of the line when waiting for publicly-funded dentistry services.
Ask, ask, ask – the new reality must be made as uncomfortable as possible.
Do not dignify the stifle words, the ists and the phobes that are thrown about only to denigrate, never to discuss. Those words are the glue keeping the new reality together, that are keeping at bay rational argument.
Make judgments. Despite what has been propagandized of late, rational adults are capable of making valid judgements, either positive or negative. The “no judging” movement of late is not about celebrating and protecting differences but about making sure the selfishness at the heart of the woke movement remains immune to criticism.
One small act can begin the end – the question is when it will come, where it will come from, and how it will come, sadly remembering what would have seemed to be so many “tipping points” having come and gone.
If, however, the woke cocooning can be seen in its entirety by society for exactly what it is – a delusional manifestation of a first principal core belief of self-protection, self- preservation, selfishness, and mass sociopathic narcissism on a scale never seen before, the next tipping point, hopefully, may be last.
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make
a desert, they call it peace.” – Calgacus via Tacitus
One of the very best critics of woke. Should be required reading.