Image courtesy of Harold Arthur McNeill
2,790 words
Every year, near the end of December, I establish plans for the coming year. The centerpiece of these plans is ten resolutions – no more, and no less. I’ve had a lot of practice at this, and I’ve discovered that more than ten major resolutions is usually too ambitious, whereas fewer than ten is not ambitious enough.
I take this annual ritual very seriously, because I see the transition from one year to another as an opportunity to re-think my life and change it in major ways. There’s no rational justification, I suppose, for thinking that this has to take place around the end of the calendar year. Theoretically I could make these plans at any time. But the beginning of a new year has important symbolic significance for me (and many others).
Also, as even the most ignorant are doubtless aware, the calendar year is not an arbitrary human contrivance. By the end of December I’ve made yet another journey round the sun, which is a genuine milestone. And as the year draws to a close, I tend to draw within myself and become more introspective. Partly, this is my Northern European soul responding to the frigidity of winter – which causes all things to draw within, in one fashion or other.
We like to think of the Christmas season as a “jolly” time. And reluctantly I must admit that this is so, even though I don’t even like the word “jolly.” But Christmas is also a bittersweet time tinged with melancholy. Have you ever noticed what downers most Christmas songs are? To see this, just hum a few bars of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” And think about that lyric: “From now on we’ll always be together, if the fates allow.” Or consider: “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”
So, every year after the presents are unwrapped (and exchanged the following day for things I really want) I sit down before the computer and open a Word file named after the coming year. And I create my resolutions. There is an art to this, of course. I’ve already mentioned that the number of resolutions is key. But there are many other issues, and pitfalls to be avoided. The most obvious one is dreaming up resolutions that are too ambitious. For example, “Save the white race” should not make your list. Instead, establish up to ten concrete things you can do in the New Year to help save the white race.
Other resolutions to be avoided include things like “Get myself straightened out,” or “Get my head out of my ass.” These are far too nebulous (and, depending upon the person, quite possibly too ambitious). When establishing my resolutions I try to think in very concrete terms. As much as possible, the resolutions should be phrased in terms of specific actions.
At the opposite end of the spectrum we find resolutions that are too specific in a small-potatoes kind of way. For instance, I have a friend who one year resolved to “Drink more coffee.” Other examples include “Organize my bedroom,” and “Clean oven.” Of course, it may be the case some years that my bedroom really does need organizing and my oven cleaning – things I may have been putting off. I’ve solved this problem by creating a New Year’s “do list” in addition to a list of resolutions. The “do list” can include these sorts of one-off tasks for the New Year.
But resolutions are supposed to be significant changes to your life. They can be “tasks,” but they should be tasks that you intend to be permanent features of your life, or at least things that will take around a year to complete. As an example, for 2013 one of my resolutions is “Improve my German.” Why is this important to me? It’s mainly a matter of pride. I’ve been studying German off and on since I was a freshman in high school, but I’ve never gotten close to fluency. This year I want to buckle down and get much closer to my goal. New Year’s resolutions can be these sorts of things: finishing unfinished business in life.
But what you need to focus on is resolutions that involve major life changes. Part of this whole process therefore has to involve looking back over the course of one’s life (especially over the last twelve months) and making an honest appraisal of things. Suppose you think that you waste too much time and are not disciplined enough in working toward your goals. A perfectly legitimate New Year’s resolution would be “Get organized” or “Become more disciplined.”
Of course, there’s a danger that such resolutions, however well-intentioned, can fall into the “nebulous” category described earlier. This is why it’s vitally important to establish specific plans for actualizing your resolutions. And this is where the real work begins. Every year I not only establish ten New Year’s resolutions, I also create a plan for achieving them. This plan consists of specific steps or actions that, in effect, operationalize my resolutions. “Weaponize” might be a better term, in my case.
Here’s a concrete example from my own 2013 plans. I am already a pretty disciplined and organized person, but I have found in the last twelve months or so that I have slipped into some patterns that result in a fair amount of time being wasted. I generally go to the gym first thing in the day, and spend about 90 minutes to two hours there. But to get myself going, I tend to take some pre-workout supplement that’s got a fair amount of caffeine in it. The result of this is that I often crash midday and wind up fuzzy-headed and napping around 4:00 p.m. The obvious solution to this is to go to the gym at night rather than in the morning.
I resisted this conclusion for a long time. I thought I’d be too tired by then, and I thought the gym would be too crowded. Plus I still need those caffeine-laced supplements to get me going (especially if I’ll be working out at night). But will I be able to fall asleep later? So I persisted in this pattern of working out in the morning and crashing by midday. Until, a few weeks ago, I actually tried the experiment of working out at night. (Not an entirely new experience for me, as I did this years and years ago.) The gym is open till around midnight, and I found that if I got there by 8:00pm it was not that crowded. I had a fair amount of energy, especially with my supplements in me. And I could fall asleep just fine a few hours later (with the help of melatonin, valerian, and a couple of vodka and tonics).
Making this small change had a dramatic effect on my life. It felt like I had hours of extra time during the day – to write, read, or whatever. And I was no longer simply vegetating at night (watching television, usually). So I’m making this my official policy in 2013. But there is another important change I’ve decided to make. I can do a fair amount of my job at home, and in a given day there’s maybe two hours of work to do (if I’m diligent). I used to maintain the policy of doing all that work first in the day (after the gym, that is). Then, after that, I would write essays for Counter-Currents or read subversive literature.
The principle here was simply this: do the things you don’t want to do first in the day, so that you’ve got them out of the way and they’re not hanging over your head. It seems like a sensible idea, and I’ve recommended it to many people. But there’s a problem with it. Sometimes I would get really bogged down in doing all those things I don’t want to do. I would get up and take breaks, prolonging the torture. And, worse yet, I would sometimes get angry at the garbage I had to deal with. This meant that when I actually finished everything and turned to writing or reading for the Cause, I was out of energy, or wasn’t in the mood.
So, in 2013 I am adopting a new policy. I will write and read for the Cause first thing in the day. Later in the afternoon, perhaps in the 2 to 3 hours prior to going to the gym at night, I will take care of matters related to my job. And since I know I need to get to the gym, I will be motivated to work fast. I am even going to try to avoid, as much as possible, checking email till the mid-afternoon (shocking, I know). The adoption of these two new policies – going to the gym at night, and doing things I don’t want to do later in the day – is going to give me more time and energy for things that really matter. And this will help me achieve one of my New Year’s resolutions: “Use time more productively.”
Now, I fully realize that not everyone has the sort of job I do, and so the specific proposals above may not be applicable to everyone. But the basic principles here can be adapted to fit most situations. For example, if you’ve got a normal 9 to 5 job five days a week, plan your days off in such a way that you are not expending your energy first thing in the day on things that don’t matter. In the evenings after work, prioritize doing the things that really matter to you, not running errands all over town (set aside one evening a week to do that, or whatever).
Anyway, my example is merely intended to illustrate how I try to translate a New Year’s resolution into a specific plan of action. If you do not do that – and I emphasize this point – you will fail. And you will be like most people who establish New Year’s resolutions: you won’t follow through on them. The classic one, of course, is “get in shape” (or “lose weight”). The most that the average man will do to operationalize this is to buy a gym membership. Which he then fails to make use of, or uses for the first 2 to 3 months of the year, before giving up.
It’s not enough, usually, to establish just one action to operationalize a resolution: there needs to be a whole series. Don’t just buy the gym membership. Make a wise decision about when you’re going to go to the gym and on which days. And then stick to it. This is the magic ingredient I really can’t help you with that much. If you don’t have any willpower or resolve, there’s not a lot I can do with you. There can be no resolutions if you don’t have any resolve. Shame is a great motivator for me. If I establish a resolution, I feel motivated to stick to it because I fear I won’t be able to respect myself if I don’t.
Of course, sometimes resolutions can be mistakes. In the past, I have set goals and resolutions that, for one reason or another, just were not feasible. Or I picked the wrong year to undertake them. “Learn to read music” made my list of New Year’s resolutions several years in a row, but I just haven’t had the time to accomplish it. I have other priorities. And having a strong sense of priorities is very important here. If you establish a resolution that turns out to be impossible, or which you realize later on was just a bad idea – then eliminate it. There’s no virtue in sticking with a bad idea to the bitter end. But what I recommend doing is replacing it with another, more reasonable resolution. If you have ten resolutions and eliminate one for some reason or another in, say, February or March, create a new resolution so that you’re always operating with a solid ten.
None of this, by the way, is an excuse for the really bad sort of “quitting.” Under no circumstances are you ever justified in abandoning resolutions like “Use time more productively,” “Quit smoking,” or “Eat healthier diet.” But if “Learn Sanskrit” or “Restore foreskin” aren’t working out for you, then you have my permission to quit.
You will notice that my discussion of my own resolution, “Use time more productively,” was really all about having more time and energy to work for the Cause. And this is crucial. Because one issue I’ve not raised so far is exactly how one arrives at resolutions – at things one resolves to change about oneself. Most people, of course, go about this in a fuzzy way. They look in the mirror and think “Gee, I could stand to lose a few pounds.” Or they think, “Maybe it would be good if I took a class.” Or: “Maybe I’m drinking too much.”
Most people’s lives are just a kind of heap of disconnected elements. Work occupies the bulk of their time – work that generally affords them little or no sense of meaning and satisfaction. Piled on top of work, like so many bacon bits and croutons, are “friends,” “family,” “sex,” and that favorite catch-all term “fun.” (“I like having fun,” singles insist in their personals ads. As a friend of mine pointed out, this is like saying “I enjoy enjoyment.”)
But a meaningful life is one in which all those individual elements are shaped and selected in terms of how they advance a goal. A meaningful life is one in which even “fun” is significant, because it comes as a reward for moving closer to the goal. Life should basically be like a fighter jet, on which there is not a superfluous nut or bolt; nothing that does not serve the basic purpose of the machine. Of course, the seats need to be comfortable and there needs to be a warm and welcoming place to land, with a hot drink waiting. But these too exist to serve the mission.
Without some sense of mission, life is just a hotchpotch and a random accident. Having a mission enables you to prioritize and select everything in life. Does x advance my mission, or doesn’t it? And having a mission lifts us out of our petty preoccupations and insecurities. There’s no need to “find yourself” when you’ve found a mission that’s bigger than you; a problem to solve that makes your own problems seem insignificant.
Readers interested in how I arrived at my mission should see my essay “How I Found My Mission in Life.” But you are no doubt reading this website because your mission is much the same as my own: destroying this modern world and saving our people and our culture. Or is this your mission? It may be that you agree that these are worthy goals, but have you made them your own?
As this year draws to a close, I urge you to reflect on the life you are living, and whether you have a mission. And, of course, I ask you to consider whether there can be any mission more important that acting – some way, somehow – to insure the survival of our people and our culture. In terms of concrete actions, this can translate into many things: reading this website, encouraging others to read this website and others like it, writing for this website (and others like it), spreading the word locally, and – hint, hint – sending money to support worthy causes.
Make 2013 the year in which you get your life in order, and put something that truly matters at the center of it. Make this the year in which you finally abjure the realm, at least in the privacy of your own mind. Shave your head and start wearing a lot of black. Make yourself tough and hard, in mind and in body. Let 2013 be the year in which you found Fight Club, or the League of Shadows. Then you’ll have a reason to cut your hair short and trim your fingernails. Become Tyler Durden or Ra’s al Ghul. Start thinking about your 9 to 5 job as a cover identity (and read my essay “My Real Life”). Start thinking about yourself as a secret agent, working within the system to destroy it.
In other words, make 2013 Year One for you, no matter how old you’ll be. Make it the year you’re born again, as a warrior for our Cause. This year you really must change your life.
20 comments
Thank you for all of your work.
This is my gift back to you. I think youll like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuTt7c3Jkg
1080p
Im in NYC too!
Sorry for the delay in responding. Very interesting link. Thank you!
This isn’t exactly a New Years resolutions – but a list what any white country (tho it’s specifically targeted at USA) needs:
I have spoken of a new law like we had after WW II. Returning vets were given their old jobs back. I would require all jobs held by legal and illegal aliens to be opened up for native born American citizens (this so-called ‘native-born’ American citizens DOES NOT include anchor babies of illegal immigrants).
I would make all federal, state and local government debt illegal.
I would cancel $20,000 of personal debt for citizens.
I would make pensions illegal. All money promised to you in retirement will be paid into a retirement account in cash value today at a locally owned co-operative trust so Wall Street/government would never touch your funds.
I would cut off all government payments to illegal aliens. This would force many of them home. I would create a negative income tax to support working American citizens so they would compete against illegal aliens.
I would cancel all Social Security disability payments to more than 2 million aliens who never paid into the system but were brought here by relatives and by Jewish agencies and Catholic charities. This would kick out a few million more people.
To qualify for that $20,000 Debt Cancellation I would require a voter ID card that will be needed to vote . This will eliminate millions of illegal aliens from the voting rolls. It would also knock all sorts of double voting and dead people from the rolls. That is another 2 or 3 million more fake voters.
Once we get control of the situation we can cut state and local taxes as well as federal income taxes making middle class life a guarantee for anyone who is a citizen and is willing to work.
I would like to have a minimum reading test for voters to eliminate a few million more voters. The combination of moving financial resources away from Wall Street plus the loss of more than 10 million votes from the political machines will protect us as much as any other doable plan.
I would also pay women who are members of any race with a declining population – i.e. white women – $10,000 to have a baby by white men.
I would seize the media and the Foundations when I seize all of those assets from the criminals. This would give us control of both political parties and the educational system.
Okay, so what are your own resolutions — the actions you will take to help bring these things about?
My new years resolutions are as follows:
1. By the end of 2013 I will be donating $30 instead of $20 per month.
2. That I purchase one book a month from Counter-Currents.
3. That I increasingly purchase more items each month through the Counter-Currents’ Amazon link.
One question follow:
I worry that Counter-Currents will not survive the passing away (I hope it never happens) of Greg Johnson the founder. When William Pierce passed on the National Alliance withered; the same with George L. Rockwell and the American Nationalist Socialist Party. I just want to contribute to a foundation that will last for many years to come. Are procedures in place for the loss of staff? Last I wish you a great year and I hope to do more for you, income permitting.
Don’t worry Peter, Mike rocks!
I of course could never replace Greg all by myself. But suffice it to say there are contingency plans in place to keep CC going in the event of such an unfortunate circumstance.
“2. That I purchase one book a month from Counter-Currents.”
An excellent resolution! May I suggest you start with my own fine tome, The Homo and the Negro?
I, in turn pledge to produce yet another fine tome for your purchase next year, The Eldritch Evola … and Others.
Happy reading!
I have already purchased the “Homo And The Negro,” excellent book.
Dear Peter,
Sorry for the delay in responding to you. I’ve caught the bug that’s been going around.
First of all, everybody at Counter-Currents appreciates your support very much.
About your concerns: Greg Johnson is indeed the driving force behind the site and the publishing imprint. However, a number of other capable people are actively involved — myself included. If — gods forbid — anything ever did happen to Greg, we would keep Counter-Currents going. This has actually been discussed by us already, amongst ourselves. Greg has actually been rather sick since Christmas, but he is getting better slowly. It is nothing to worry about.
Best Wishes,
Jef
I envy your life of comparative leisure. Just curious about what is it that you actually do that you can be done in a couple hours of working from home?!?! Two hours per day of exercise? And take a siesta at 4PM?? Nice!
Entertainment industry? Lawyer? Insurance agent? Financier?
I’m not surprised by your curiosity. But, sorry, that information is given out on a need-to-know basis…….
I’m starting to like you Jef. We have two things in common. A need for caffeine and I (too) often crash midday and wind up fuzzy-headed and napping around 4:00 p.m as I begin my evening shift.
Very good, Jef. The last three paragraphs resonate with me. For those of us who are perhaps a bit older and unmarried and without family, finding a mission in life is very important. As I’ve mentioned before, I think we’re pretty similar, although I work much longer hours, lack the free time you seem to have, and don’t think about these things to the extent you do (I’m too busy doing!). This is excellent guidance for our young men.
Thank you!
A good new years resolution for myself and in fact everyone is to put more into the cause than you take out. By this I mean spending more time in activism mode than passive hobby mode.
I suspect that there are many of us out there for whom the cause is a leisure activity and we are much like passive sports fans, except instead of football teams to root for, we follow WN parties, movements and writers.
Time to become more active, even if activism at this stage means making larger and more regular donations to those who are already active.
Theoretically, the rational justification is human irrationality itself, but it’s playing with words, and harming the Logos in the process. So yes, indeed, there is no rational justification in this behavior. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
When I was an atheistic and ultra-rationalistic teenager, I used to find New Year’s resolutions a bit stupid, and quite frankly a bit pathetic: if you really need to wait for a certain date before beginning a certain task, you must be a weak-willed, superstitious wimp, I reasoned. And with no doubt, this attitude toward resolutions in general is currently prevalent in modern Western culture, a culture which may be stupid, low and crude, but which is very much rationalistic and opposed to superstition…
– I will stop smoking in January 20XX, I promise.
– Why don’t you stop now?
– … (the awkward silence that summarizes a human’s contemporary attitude toward his own irrationality)
Such a dialogue would be a standard one in Western countries when dealing with personal goals devoid of non-mental constraints.
When I grew up, meaning, when both the weight of my brain and the weight of my experiences grew up, I of course understood the limits of Reason — never having had the chance of getting a a good education, I had to learn basic principles quite late —, and even more importantly, found in sociobiology a legitimating ground for irrationality.
Humans do need symbolism. They see and understand symbols on a subconscious level. They may or may not choose to listen to each symbol, depending on the negativity of it, but it will always affect their mood and their outlook on things. Unless you take some mind-altering drugs abolishing emotion in your brain — and therefore transforming you into nothing more than a machine, opening new fascinating philosophical questions —, you will always be a superstitious “idiot”. If the ending of a year — superbly defined as a real phenomenon by Jeff Costello above — emotionally encourages you to reflect on what you have done of your mortal existence during the fading year, then by all means, do not close your heart to the symbol. It is a natural, healthy shoot of cocaine or meth. A shoot that can do wonders, and cannot be synthesized through autosuggestion alone, making it a rare and valuable thing.
I personally don’t write New Year’s resolutions like Herr Costello does; I have my own methods, more complex (basically involving handcrafted software), for task management and memorizing. But I do accept the symbolism of the New Year, and enjoy it as something which boosts my global motivation (which could be defined as the sum of focus and willpower).
I’ll now lend myself to the customary prophesies. From the height of my modest knowledge of history, psychology and crowd psychology, I believe 2013 won’t witness any “white awakening” in the Western developed countries (excluding therefore Greece), nor in fact any serious revolt whatsoever, even in a period of economic crisis and standard of living in freefall. A revolt in say, the USA would require a sufficiently large mass (>30%) of the American population necessarily using violence and brute force against a democratic State that has been so far smart enough to maintain the illusion of perfect legitimacy. Sorry, won’t happen. That just breaks every psychological law out there. Also, the federal government has big helicopters and big guns, if persuasion is not enough to squash the revolt.
The possibility of revolt or secession ruled out, that sends us directly to 2016/2017 for potential political change, the date of the next Presidential elections in most Western countries. Ouch! I may just as well say that the deadline for pro-white political action has already been passed.
Greece will see Golden Dawn continue to make some progress, but I am quite unenthusiastic about the long-term perspectives of this party, since its accession to power would be vehemently condemned, attacked and sabotaged by nearly every country part of the UN.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France and other “undeveloped” European countries will witness an acceleration of their economic problems, but it won’t provoke any surge in the racial sentiments of these countries. For a racial sentiment to emerge, there must be races in these countries; hard when most of the population is a mestizo of some sort. It will on the other hand help Marxist and non-racial far right parties, which includes the French National Front; I guess it is good news for WNs, by default.
My conclusion is that 2013, and the years coming after that, won’t bring you any satisfying systemic change. The continent of America will still be ruled by the federal government of the United States 20 years from now, and this federal government will still be ruled by a Chavez-like “President”. You should work on your own life, and work on personal projects with people dear to you, rather than spend your time worrying about a social change that doesn’t come. Educate yourself, earn money, start businesses, do creative things to withdraw intelligently from the system, network with likeminded friends, et caetra. The usual things. I may add: make the art of avoiding taxes a way of life. The end goal is to be able to act with all your potential when a window of opportunity for the creation of a white ethnostate opens, somewhere around 2030 or 2040. And to be able to at least have a good life if this window never opens.
A fine essay, Jef. You do great work; everyone here does. One of my resolutions is disconnecting from Internet activities for six months. I want to see what kind of impact it has on my productivity. I’m turning in my smart phone, I-pad, and home Internet connection, and I’m uninstalling the network/WiFi components on my laptops so there is no way to connect in coffee shops or wifi spots. CC is among a very small handful of sites I visit where I don’t leave feeling like I just wasted a few minutes of my time. The mainstream media is a joke. The facts and particulars change; the interpretative framework never does. The subject doesn’t matter. If you’ve read one story, you’ve read them all. It has been that way for a long time now. Among other things, I want to make some headway in my long neglected dead tree book pile.
I suggest we start a column like this every January in which Counter-Current members can declare their White Nationalist resolutions for the coming year. Make it a Counter-Currents tradition.
1. Defer to my husband more often and if at all possible. ( trust me this is a big big thing for me). 2. Buy and drink less fancy coffee. 3. Finish my craft projects before I start a new one. 4. Cook or bake a totally new dish at least once a month. 5. Learn a new German word every day. 6. Be more strict about my homeschool program with Dresden.
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.