The Faustian Left And The Sisters Of Fate
Fate, Destiny and a Confused Bearded Lady
This past week Fate as a concept has been on my mind quite a lot. I began considering Fate when I happened to come across a video of a female-to-male transexual who was crying because — now complete with a beard — she never knew how accustomed to loneliness and isolation men actually are. I quipped on social media that there was an aura of Greek Tragedy to her lot. Having insisted that reality and biology bend to her own hubris on the basis that she is really a ‘‘he’’ trapped in the wrong body — she now finds herself trapped in the wrong body in reality. There’s a grim irony to it.
Oedipus, unlike the transexual, was keenly aware of the power of fate and destiny. Having been told as a young man that he would one day kill his parents he chose to distance himself from the possibility by moving to another part of Greece. However, it was precisely this act of defiance that sealed both his and his parent’s fate.
In David Lean’s majestic Lawrence of Arabia, an Arab falls from his camel within the deadly and barren Nefud Desert. The men tell Lawrence to leave the man to die rather than risk his own life by backtracking and returning to the baking sands once more. However, after quite the ordeal, Lawrence returns with the Arab man and defiantly, and somewhat arrogantly, explains that ‘‘Nothing is written’’. Later a dispute breaks out in the camp and Lawrence agrees to shoot the wrongdoer because he’s a neutral party. The man he has to execute is the man he saved, Gasim. Anthony Quinn’s Auda Abu Tayi character sardonically chimes in ‘‘So it was written, then’’.
The juxtaposition is a prescient one. TE Lawrence is a quintessentially Faustian figure, the Arab men Magian. Lawrence rejects the possibility that Fate is ordained from God, or from any metaphysical force at all because Faustian Man bends the world to his Will, not vice versa. Western civilization is unusual in this regard. Even watching Lean’s film again, one views the inherent mysticism and Otherness of the Arabs as alien, backward, and superstitious.
Many people are uncomfortable with Spengler’s splitting asunder the Classical Greek and Roman civilizations from the Western. Yet one of the primary differences is the manner in which Fate and Destiny were hardwired into the Greek metaphysic and anathema to our own. In Ancient Greece the sisters of Fate, or Moirai, allotted a destiny to everyone and made sure that that destiny was fulfilled. Viewed from the perspective of the modern Western mind, it is hard to imagine something more fundamentally illiberal. Free Will is something the individual simply pretends to have, the Fates know exactly what will become of you, particularly if attempting to dodge what awaits you.
It is, in my view, the assumption of a meddling higher power that sticks in the craw of Westerners, especially post-Christian Westerners. The hegemonic and all-consuming narrative of the West in the 2020s is that there should be no constraints placed upon the expression of the self at all. Nothing is fixed, there is no path or arc which is predetermined. Men can become women, women can become men, because biology may not hinder or set in stone the life path of the individual. The physical form itself is Fate, it predicts how one will live their lives and such a constraint placed upon the Will cannot be permitted so out it goes.
There is a frantic, maniacal glee with which the newly ‘‘liberated’’ sever traditional bonds and ties. You will notice that the word ‘‘bond’’ is also a method of constraint. There is no fixed path, no set destination for the individual, it is an open world, and within it there are boundless and infinite identities and sexual proclivities to be explored and unveiled.
There is no such thing as ‘‘Fate’’ because ‘‘life is what we make it’’.
The reader may have noticed by this point that what I’m describing are essentially the traits and mindset of what today is thought of as the progressive liberal left on the political spectrum. These traits are also what could be accurately described as a form of Faustian decay in the late stage. This will irk some people. However, in this age of the self-made identity I, and most of the readers of this publication, are somewhat anachronistic. My identity is set, as if by the Moirai. I’m white, English, and of a decidedly conservative mindset. I’m uncomfortable with homosexuality and I know for a fact that it’d be preposterous for me to try and pass myself off as female. What’s more, there is a multitude of small characteristics and regional quirks that I have which are specific to my background and the era into which I was born. I cannot change who or what I am, even if I wanted to. I have free will, but I cannot become a woman from Devon, or African, or a Hindu or Japanese.
At the same time, it is demanded of me that I acquiesce in the dissolution of what constitutes my identity by making it universal and ‘‘inclusive’’. Thus, not only should there be no constraints placed upon the in-group but the entire world is invited to partake in the process of deconstruction and severing. An African no longer has to be an African, he can be English. A Muslim woman can become both English, and a lesbian, and even a man!
Nothing is written, it is a play without a script. Or is it?
The woman who is now trapped in a man’s body with fake genitalia and a synthetic hormone-induced beard, didn’t actually understand what being a man is. The surgery and the chemicals did what they could, but she was amazed that people crossed the street to avoid her and that she was expected to idle away endless hours alone without the ability to get hugs or even speak with others. She’d invented a role for herself, in a play written by herself with herself as the main star, and then discovered that her Fate was to remain inside of her self-penned fantasy permanently.
When viewed from the level of the modern West as a whole, it could be reasonably argued that its guiding principle was based on Aleister Crowley’s Thelema cult and ‘‘Do what thou wilt’’. In this context we’ve slipped completely over, now there is a higher metaphysical process and power at work, but it’s demonic. Fate and Destiny have returned once more in the guise of Satan. Satan will, eventually, claim Faust.
The Free Will jamboree is a grand ruse or joke being played out at the expense of the easily corrupted and hubristic dupes who gorge themselves on the self-adoration and ‘‘liberty’’ of the late West. We can give them a nomenclature; The Faustian Left.
A few years ago I came across a leftwing critique of Oswald Spengler on YouTube. The video essay claimed that Spengler was typical of the Reactionary pessimism of the right but also that Spengler had not provided a single source, statistic, or data set for his views and opinions. The YouTuber claimed Spengler simply invoked ‘‘magic’’ when explaining the inevitability of Destiny and cyclical history. In other words, Spengler did not think or share the views of a sociology professor from Harvard or wherever. Spengler’s approach was unscientific and not in the least empirical, therefore it was false to make claims about the Destiny of an entire civilization — because nothing is written.
Today the Faustian Left has every institution and science department, university, and journalist supporting their views with hard evidence and facts. Science says race isn’t real and that women can become men, so it’s ‘‘true’’. Of course, in reality, this is just a matter of institutional capture, which is itself a gentle euphemism for ‘‘corruption’’. The institutions which should have provided truth, now provide lies, and these lies justify the further hacking and slashing through the norms which formed societal safety mechanisms. Once more, the play is created as it is performed.
To return to territory I’ve explored before, this is the arc of Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
But wait, there I go again invoking fables, magic, and parables of a predetermined Destiny. A road which we’re locked on whether we want to be or not. Don’t we have Free Will and the infinite capacity to change course, use rationalism and save ourselves? On what authority though? Reactionary mystics who were probably racist? God? The Sisters of Fate?
The tragedy, the grand joke being played on the West, is that in the name of rejecting higher metaphysical truths we simultaneously act as architects of our own Fate. In the Islamic tradition, Fate is called ‘‘Qadar’’. In Hinduism ‘‘Karma’’ in Chinese ‘‘Mingyun’’ and in Hebrew ‘‘Kismet’’. Indeed, our modern Western comprehension of such concepts is so frail we simply adopted the word Karma for our own use.
Karma is a bitch, and these days she’s wearing a beard.
I’ve noted before the increasingly erratic and seemingly desperate behaviour of Western elites. They work frantically to enact nonsensical policies and world-spanning schemes and they do so to a set of deadlines. Time and dates loom large these days, 2030, 2040, Agenda 21. We live in a permanent countdown, whether it be marking the debt clock or the year the sun melts the icecaps. While the masses are encouraged to sever their bonds to anything tangible the elite class seems to be fearful, terrified even, of time.
Time is running out, and the thread of Fate, has become tight.
‘Nothing is written’...Your ‘bearded lady’ reference made me think of Norah Vincent, the libertarian US journalist whose 2006 book ‘Self Made Man’ retells her experience of living as a man for 18 months. Disguised as a man, she pursued male activities including dating women. Vincent was a lesbian, so this may not have been too challenging; however, living as a man ultimately was. The mental strain of maintaining a false identity eventually caused a depressive breakdown. She ended her life by assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland. From living as a man, she had concluded that women were privileged, and that men ‘were suffering’ and ‘needed each other more than anything else.’ She also refused to believe in transgenderism, calling it ‘the death of the self and the soul’. Be careful how you handle fate.
Thanks Morgoth. Your article just reinforces my belief that we have to return to our spiritual roots to survive. That there are some things intangible that can't be put on a spreadsheet; like your first kiss, looking at a beautiful church, painting, watching a thunderstorm pass overhead at night, with the window open and a cup of tea. These things can't be sorted alphabetically in column A on an excel spreadsheet to work out how to sell a product to a certain demographic; they're intangible.
I was thinking of something, the cycle of things (stick with me on this). As a Scotsman, I play a bit of golf. Golf started in Scotland, a shepherd decided it would be a good idea to bring a stick and ball with him whilst he was with his sheep.
This idea grew, and became the game we know.
It started off as an "art", something you had a knack of doing. Then some of the fundamentals and basic laws of the game were discovered and developed. The technology of the sticks and balls developed.
The game became about 50% "knack/natural gift" and 50% "technology". The "Golden Years" of golf were the '60s and '70s when, my favourite golfer, Jack Nicklaus dominated the game. His swing wasn't "conventional" but he is regarded as the best player of all time as his strength of will (Faustian Spirit) got him through.
As the technology developed and mobile phones and golf apps became available to the masses, we are now at a point where the ideal angles of the body and club have been worked out, so that, an average player with a mobile phone and the latest golf clubs, can develop his swing to wherw he can now hit the ball as far as, or further, than Jack Nicklaus at his peak.
Now, the "great copiers" the Asians, have factory lines of children with mobile phones at driving ranges developing their cut-and-paste swings. Where the individuality and magic has been condensed down to angles, torque and clubhead speed.
What I'm trying to say is that Western Man invents something, it goes through a magical, "Golden Age" period, the subjects mystique is turned into centimetres, metres, kilograms, degrees etc. the magic goes, and it descends into corporate materialism with a substandard, plastic version developed in the Far East, stripped of all secrets and magic.
Anyone else have similar thoughts? Or do I just have too much time on my hands lol.