John C. Wright's Journal

Continued from prior columns, here concluded.

The civilizational suicide of Wokeness is an eternal revolt against earth and heaven, seeking to undo the gains of civilization, and to reject nature herself. This means rejecting human nature, which the eternal rebels take to be fluid and ever-evolving.

To be one of them, one must be “Woke” that is, enlightened enough to see and reject the hidden sources of all the injustices of the world. These injustices spring from a world-spirit or zeitgeist the ancient called the demiurge and the moderns variously call capitalism, patriarchy, whiteness, white supremacy, and cis-heteronormativity (I kid you not).

To become enlightened, one need pass no test, shed no blood, work no miracles, donate to no charity. One need only recite the bromides, whatever happens to be fashionable, of the other members of the conformist mob of the Woke. To fail to do so invites ostracization, called cancellation and deplatforming.

No merit makes one Elect. Indeed, a lack of merit is an advantage.

The fact that you lack any virtue, any value to self or others, means you are a victim of the world-spirit, which proves your worth to yourself. The fact that you are a victim means you are secretly a king: the fact that you are a loser proves you are a winner.

The reasoning here is that of a paranoid megalomaniac: the Woke regards himself as worthy of the persecution of the world, for the same reason prophets and messiahs are persecuted, because of their exceptional exceptionalness.

What is really going on is that this Wokeness is satanic, and pursuit of their aims by their means leads the Woke, step by step, to jettison their own humanity within themselves.

Their project is the suicide of civilization, the corruption of innocence, the cessation of humane sentiment, the darkening of the intellect, and the damnation of the soul.  The aim is the abolition of man.

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Continued from prior columns.

We have seen that Christian civilization has adopted a suicidal worldview, whose current name is Wokeness. It is one ideal, and ideal of death, with many manifestations (Hegelian, Marxist, Cultural Marxist) prompting many cults and causes (Feminism, Gender Ideology, Critical Race Theory, Climate Panic Theory) leading to several types of activism (Intersectionalism, Globalism, the Great Reset). This ideal is the modern version of an unbroken tradition of esoteric thought leading to Hegel from Boehme, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism. This tradition is theosophy, not philosophy, for it is not based on reason, nor is it theology, for it is not based on revelation.

The civilizational suicide of Wokeness is a tradition of mystagogues forever seeking to synthesize all faiths into a unity, replace God with man, and create heaven on earth, or abolish earth altogether. It is a tradition of unreason, inhumanity, and antichrist.

Let us ponder the path of unreason: the politics, the theory, the history, and the modern fruition.

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This essay is continued from previous columns. The nature of the ideals of civilizational suicide haunting the modern age were dubbed the Ideals of Death, and the Terror of France was named as the date of their onset. Next was explained the unvarying tactic of deterring rather than fostering dialog, eternally following the same steps of gaslighting and inversion, as when a cry-bully claims to be the victim of the aggression he himself initiates, accusing his victims of his own wrongdoings.

Now we to turn to a discussion of the ancient sources of modern ideology.

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This essay is continued from a previous column. The first column named the nature of the ideals of civilizational suicide haunting the modern age as the Ideals of Death, and names the date of their onset as the Terror of France, ironically called the Age of Reason. The column explains the nature of the philosophies growing from these ideals, and notes the unvarying tactic of deterring rather than fostering introspection, reason, dialectic, dialogue.

These are the tactics of unreason, using speech to halt speech, using thought to halt thought, using accusation to answer accusation, using swords to stop words.

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This essay is in several columns. The first defines the nature of the ideals of civilizational suicide haunting the modern age, and names the date of their onset. Further columns will explore the tactics and nature of these ideals, their continuity and singleness of purpose.as well as the ancient origins of the esoteric tradition from which such deathly ideals spring.

1. Bookshelf of Western Civilization

Once I had a bookshelf next to my desk where I kept the works of my school days.

My school, hence my bookshelf, was consecrated to the Great Books of the Western World, as compiled by Mortimer Adler of Encyclopedia Britannica fame. The top shelf held freshman readings, including Homer, Aristotle, Euripides, Euclid, Thucydides. The second shelf held sophomore readings, including Virgil, Aquinas, the Bible and the Testaments, Ptolemy, Livy. Junior readings on the third shelf included Milton, Kant, Jonathon Swift, Newton, Adam Smith, the Federalist Papers. Senior year readings filled the bottom shelf, and included Tolstoy, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin, Einstein, Marx, De Tocqueville.

Because this bookshelf abutted my desk, I could put out a hand and pluck up any work of poetry, philosophy, mathematics, science, theology, politics, or history as might need to be reread. A chronological summary of all Western learning could be gleaned at a glance from the titles shining on the book spines.

A time came when I realized that my hand nevermore reached to the bottom shelf.

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