The Fine Art of Automotive Repair

2,086 words

Say you’re trying to fix a vehicle. You pop open the hood and find that someone threw a wrench in the gears, the relay is worn, and the battery needs replacing. How do you then fix the vehicle? Well, you remove the wrench from the gears, replace the relay and the battery and then check for additional damage (you never know with cars). While you’re at it, change the oil. And then the car runs again. You pop open a can of beer to celebrate, with your hands still greasy from the oil, naturally — otherwise, it doesn’t count.

Now, there are a few problems with this rosy image of self-reliant automotive repair.

The vehicle in question is not a classic muscle car with its masculine hard edges, or even an ol’ reliable slice of Americana which one can use to ferry the family around. No, it’s an ugly and boring blob on wheels that screeches at you if you don’t buckle up. And no, you’re not fixing it in the driveway of your house, because you don’t live in a house. You live in the city and fixing automobiles in the streets is frowned upon. And you’re in all likelihood not fixing the car yourself, because you’ve got no idea how to do it: your father never got around to teaching you how to fix cars because your parents divorced. This is all assuming you own a car, which is a big assumption in this day of stagnating wages for whites and legalized car theft for ethnic minorities, to say nothing of the extortionate excise tax rates on cars and gasoline. Well, at least you can have a beer, right? Well, because of feminism, your wife refuses to bring you a beer, so you have to actually, physically go to the fridge and retrieve said beverage and then physically walk the long walk back to the armchair like you’re some single loser. Well, friend, you don’t have a vehicular problem. You have a societal problem.

So, you pop open the hood and you find that someone threw a wrench in the gears, the relay is worn and that the battery needs replacing. How do you then fix the society? You remove the wrench in the gears, replace the relay and the battery and you check for additional damage (you never know with societies). While you’re at it, change the oil. And then society runs again. Cue beer, greasy palms, et cetera.

Now, there are a few problems with this rosy image of self-reliant societal repair.

First of all, society is not a car. It doesn’t have a hood, gears, relays, batteries, or motor oil. Second of all, a broken car doesn’t run. A broken society does run, but badly, and in ways both stupid and evil. Third of all, society isn’t yours, won’t fit in your driveway, and fixing it doesn’t have the wholesome and fulfilling sentiment of automotive repair.

A feature of the vanilla conservative mindset is the idea that society can be fixed like a car, or more precisely, like a poorly-performing company. There are bad, criminal, evil, stupid, underperforming, or otherwise non-functioning people who’ve made things bad and broken society; people who threw the proverbial wrench in the gears. By removing those people and cleaning up their mess, we can restore the greatness of our society. Then we retire to our armchairs and have a celebratory beer. Much of normie-conservatism is perpetual outrage at the Latest Excess of Librulism™, documented in my last article on this site.

Now, I’m not here to smash yet another chair over the head of doddering old Conservative Inc. Rather, I’m here to test my mettle against you, Dissident Rightist. Yes, sir. You, too, have fallen into the trap of believing that society can be fixed like a car, or a poorly-performing company. The notion of playing corporate hatchet man on a society-wide scale doubtlessly appeals to the bloodlust characteristic of one of our neurotypes. The other half — the mildly and not-so-mildly autistic among us — relish the notion of untangling the webs of the deep state in order to weave them into a corporate Volkstaat.

We’ve performed exemplary work in identifying the problems which plague our society. This review of National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy by our esteemed editor Greg Johnson contains the most easily digestible encapsulation and enumeration of our age’s many troubles. I’d only add to it the litany of woes which arise from the Woman Question, which you can learn at any manosphere blog, or from merely being around single women. And what’s more, we understand the roots of the problems. We know that distrust, destruction, deprivation, and dealignment are the results of multiculturalism, multiracialism, feminism, liberalism, political correctness, globalism, crony capitalism, and nihilism. These, in turn, arose from the decoupling of society from traditional religion and its subsequent turn towards materialism, buttressed by the advance of technology and increasingly global commercial activity.

Okay, so we’ve peeked under the hood, and the best way to put it is that our shit’s fucked up. What’s more is that our shit’s been fucked up for a very long time, probably as far back as the rise of the Medicis, if not earlier. A banker purchasing a dukedom is an affront to God and law if there ever was one, and it went entirely without consequence. And the less said about the City of London, the murder of Charles I, and the Bankers’ Revolt of 1688 (which they brazenly call the Glorious Revolution), the better.

You gotta ask yourself: why? Why did we get from society more or less functioning, being well ordered, man on Earth, God in Heaven, to our present state of being? What went wrong?

Well, there’s your problem right there, Dissident Rightist. Nothing went wrong. There is no “wrong.” There is no “broken.” There is no fixing that which isn’t broken.

In Platonic terms, the act of fixing a car is the act of bringing a physical thing into greater accordance with the ideal form which inhabits the world of Forms. In this sense, we are bringing the broken car into accordance with the ideal of Carness, which is what all cars tend asymptotically towards, and functioning cars are closer to this ideal than broken cars. Now, we have to ask ourselves: How do we fix society when we have no idea of Societyness, the ideal form of society? It is so much bigger than us. Personally, I’m a monarchist and I believe that medieval society was a good model, but I believe it was neither an ideal society nor a society that could stand the test of time. After all, its power waned when faced with the money-power of the great merchant cities, and what was left was devoured by the Enlightenment philosophers.

I’m not a big believer in Platonic idealism, so I doubt that there is an ideal Society-form. I certainly do not think that society can be engineered, maintained, and fixed in the way a car is engineered, maintained, and fixed. Mencius Moldbug’s recent clear-pill series of essays for the American Mind remind me of a notion which I repeated often ca. 2015; that engineers should be beaten with sticks if they try to talk about society and politics. Apparently, society is a helicopter and the aesthetics of the ruling class are the Jesus nut. Well, that’s all very well and good, Moldy, but the problem is, nuts and bolts are replaceable and they have a prescribed form and composition if the helicopter is to run. A helicopter and a car are, from the perspective of the manufacturer, repairman and operator; Platonic things which have to correspond, more or less, to a certain form if they are to function.

Bringing us back to the why of today. It is my belief that civilization is a self-devouring entity. Briefly, its success and growth depend on the elimination of such human neurotypes which are high in thumos – which is to say high in drive, or as I like to call them, aristocratic neurotypes. This is because such human neurotypes often defy the will of prospective absolute rulers — hence the relative powerlessness of the medieval feudal kings. In order for society to function, these men have to either submit (and lose their sacred honor) and become workers, or be killed.

Now, I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but work stinks — this is why we have peasants. Hence, such men are eliminated, violently, which is to say the environment of civilization selects against the high-thumos man governed by honor and a quest for personal sovereignty while selecting for the docile man of low thumos, who lives by his belly (senses), and is quite happy to serve. Now, this makes things much easier for the kings, who get to rule over very obedient subjects, and this is how great societal projects are completed. Also, without all those local aristocrats vying for power, you can build a massive trade network and divide labor over the entire kingdom, instead of each count employing protectionism for his own county and demesne; hence great wealth for the king and merchants.

But the catch is this: society loses its defense in depth. The previously decentralized societies of local alphas in mutual-defense pacts with each other — feudalism — were ill-suited for society-wide projects, but could rely on each local power center for defense against bad ideas — if one count lost his mind and implemented female liberation in his county, it did not infect the rest of the kingdom. However, with the defiant, high-thumos nobility erased and replaced by docile middle-managers, all it takes is for one insane idea to breach the perimeter of the shrinking number of alphas who then implement it society-wide. Mass society is the society of mass insanity. It is also uglier and more materialistic, as the docile, bourgeois neurotypes drown out those who yearn for sovereignty, beauty, and the numinous.

These are the biological underpinnings of the civilization cycles described by Giambattista Vico and Oswald Spengler. Multiculturalism, multiracialism, feminism, liberalism, political correctness, globalism, crony capitalism, and nihilism arose out of those same processes which made our civilization great to begin with. Many people hate on Ricardo Duchesne when he points out that liberalism is a uniquely Western phenomenon that brought about our greatness. Indeed, it’s doubtful whether the Industrial Revolution would have transpired without it. So, no, nothing went wrong. Everything went as it should have gone. And that’s why it can’t be fixed.

Next time someone tries to tell you that X is the problem, ask him why X arose. Remind him of Chesterton’s fence — that madmen did not arrive in the middle of the night and develop liberalism, multiculturalism, feminism, etc. etc. Remind him that these things appeared because they were the right thing to happen at the time. “Right” here meaning “good for the civilization,” if not necessarily for its constituting human members.

Now, obviously, this leaves a massive question unanswered: What do we do with our non-functioning society? The engineer, who is a perfect example of the docile neurotype obsessed with solving problems without checking whether the problem is properly framed, solvable, or even a problem, will screech at me for not having a solution. But I’ll cheerfully admit that I do not have a solution. You gotta learn to be humble, you gotta understand that the world is so vastly bigger than you, that trying to understand it fully is a fool’s errand and that the best thing a man can do is start making his own immediate surroundings right. When you’re doing this, you’ll instinctively know what is right.

I mentioned that I’m not a Platonic thinker. This is half-right. I believe that the ideal form of government is rule by philosopher-king. However, I do not think that we should find the nearest philosopher and make him a king. Rather, as per Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s wisdom, I believe that if one is to become philosopher-king, it is better to start as king rather than as philosopher. Doing precedes knowing.

That’s my solution. Do not overthink these things. Rather, if you are so inclined, focus on attaining political or metapolitical power — the wise men will come later and the wisdom will make itself apparent. And then you can collapse in your armchair, your muscles aching from the day’s work — and God willing, your smiling, friendly wife will bring you a beer.