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WAR

From the perspective of Hyperborea, what shall we say of war? It enables colonization, motivates commerce, drives industrialization, calls forth innovation, and forces civilizational selection. What’s not to love?

Hoof and Grass – Wood and Wind – Steel and Fire – every age of migration and colonization relied on the making of war, for more likely than not, when an invasive population first touched its feet to new soil, they were not the first humans to do so. Previous inhabitants had to be displaced, exterminated, or subjugated. Nor did Leviathan suffer from this. Quite the contrary. The more advanced civilization inevitably won, unless it had grown soft in its doddering old age, and either way, the losers were expendable, grist for the mill, to the victor the spoils. All was right with the world.

Meanwhile, the makers of war require the implements thereof. First came swords, knives, shields, and armor, and the metal for forging them - and also horses, those noble beasts who carried warriors into the fray. Tradesmen and merchants supplied the hordes with what they needed, and wartime commerce had its genesis and began its evolution. Next came guns and cannons, for destructive capabilities had to advance. Merchants supplied these as well. The march of progress brought forth ever more terrible engines of destruction, and always there were merchants to provide them. Commerce! If Leviathan could smile, surely it would have, nor would its good cheer have been marred in the least by the mounting piles of corpses, young and old alike feeding the flies, for every person and every community is expendable, grist for the mill, to the victor the spoils. All was right with the world.

Where at first the business of war had relied on tradesmen such as blacksmiths, these eventually gave way to industrialization. The sheer number of weapons, ammunition, and war machines required was staggering. Efficiency was needed, and economies of scale, and division of labor, and centralized control. Humanity was equal to the task. Factories were built and equipped, and products were churned out at dizzying speeds. Industrialization soon became the factor that decided the outcome of military conflicts. Whoever had (or had access to) the most and the best factories, won. The United States did not become mightier than other nations because it had more soldiers or because its soldiers were braver. No, it became mightier because its armies and navies were better equipped, and this in turn was because it could harness the tremendous power of the military industrial complex.

Nor is it sufficient to have merely the most weapons, ammunition, and war machines: it is also necessary to have the best. Innovation! Nothing on earth is more beautiful or more deadly. Physicists, chemists, engineers, mathematicians, all are recruited by the military industrial complex, and all do their part to continuously improve man’s ability to slaughter man. To shoot farther, straighter, faster; to demolish more totally; to carry more people and things from point A to point B and do it more quickly so the killing can begin without delay; to better enable communications and the analysis of information so better command decisions can be made and more of the enemy neutralized: the appetite for innovation is voracious, ravenous, never satisfied, and Leviathan gobbles up its daily meals with gusto, excreting corpses with as little concern as a man has for his turds.  

From the making of total war comes civilizational selection, for total war is a zero sum game: either you win or you lose, and if you lose, you are either displaced, exterminated, or subjugated. In recent decades we haven’t been witnessing total war very often. Instead we see governments toppled – and then the victor, usually the United States, rushes in to try to rebuild the place in its own image, and lo and behold! They repeatedly fail. They win the war and lose the peace, over and over again, because they don’t understand what war is for. It’s a contest of civilizations, and the loser is supposed to be made to vanish, either by genocide, or by exile, or by being absorbed into the victor and rendered irrelevant as a discrete entity, its useful attributes assimilated and its useless ones buried and forgotten. Chase, kill, eat, excrete: these are what the victor is supposed to do to the vanquished. When it does it, civilizational selection takes place, Leviathan is strengthened, and all is right with the world, for the victor has proven itself the best at commerce, industry, and innovation, and these are the principles by which Leviathan rises and expands.

Can the individual exploit all this? Of course. Be the merchant. Be the industrialist. Be the innovator. HAIL MAMMON! ISCHYROS DIAVOLOS!    

AGE OF STEEL AND FIRE

Leviathan has been maturing like an organism these last few thousand years – just not uniformly in all parts of its body. Different pockets of the human race have advanced at different paces, though in modern times uniformity has been spreading, thanks to the unifying power of technology. I divide the stages of advancement according to the evolving modes of transport that characterized migration and colonization, the two principles that play the largest roles in Leviathan’s maturation. It’s by studying these stages that we open the mental door to what I call Hyperborea.

The first stage of migration and colonization was the Age of Hoof and Grass. The hooves in question were of course on the feet of horses and oxen, which got their energy to move by eating the grass they found on the way. Examples of such migrations were the Mongol invasions of present-day Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus, and parts of Syria and Turkey; the Proto-Indo-European migration westward from the Pontic steppe in present-day Ukraine and Russia; and the Teutonic and Celtic “barbarian” invasions that swept across Europe during the days of the Roman Empire.

The second stage of migration and colonization was the Age of Wood and Wind. The wood in question was used in the making of great ocean-going ships, which got their energy to move primarily from the blowing wind. These migrations were westward from the various nations of Europe, across the Atlantic ocean to the shores of North and South America and nearby islands, or else south from the various nations of Europe, down into Africa, and sometimes back north again along Africa’s other coast, sailing both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The third stage of migration and colonization – the one in which Western Man currently finds itself – is the Age of Steel and Fire. The steel in question is used in the making of modern vehicles, all of which are (and always have been) powered by fire, be it in coal furnaces (heating water into steam) or in the carburetors of internal combustion engines, or still more advanced technologies, such as nuclear, in military ships, icebreakers, and submarines. The iconic migration via steel and fire was the building of railroads, either across the United States or across Europe. Some think the mass production of pistols and rifles defeated the American Indian, or else maybe small pox and other microbes, and these of course played major roles - but also key was the locomotive, which brought more white men out west than the indigenous tribes could hope to contend with (especially after the ravages of European germs).

Today the most iconic steel and fire transport is the airplane, by which man can cross oceans in hours. But this mode of transport will one day be eclipsed by something still greater: the rocket ship. Today, the Age of Steel and Fire has yet to express its full potential. Trains, cars, trucks, and airplanes cross continents, yes, and jets, ocean liners, and oil tankers cross oceans, but continents have been crossed since the Age of Hoof and Grass, and oceans since the Age of Wood and Wind. The frontier that only steel and fire can cross is cislunar and interplanetary space. Man has sent expeditions out into this great expanse but has not yet built settlements on lunar or Martian territory. The day for that is rapidly approaching. I hope to see it in my lifetime and have a reasonable shot at doing so.

Reading at length on the foregoing and deeply contemplating it will open your mental door to Hyperborea should you care to join me there. ISCHYROS DIAVOLOS!  

HYPERBOREA

In this, my 50th blog post, I introduce the concept of Hyperborea, by which I mean a state of mind that is characterized by the principle of awe in the face of Leviathan, that earthly titan who is man writ large, subordinating all space and matter under the dominion of commerce.

The name, Hyperborea, is intended to evoke an image of the frozen north, buffeted by blizzards and blanketed in snowdrifts that could swallow mere men. Here barbarians make their home, ply their trades and spill their blood. Such as these, in the days when deities seemed responsible for the world, would have told their sons and daughters of Odin, or of Conan’s Crom, both of whom had this in common: they were indifferent to human suffering, and equally indifferent to human joy, caring only for their own vast and inscrutable plans. Leviathan is much the same. Not a deity, nor supernatural in any way, but vast and inscrutable, and as cold and indifferent as the killing storms of winter.

Worship is wasted on Leviathan, as is prayer. Sacrifices on smoking altars will go unnoticed, and chalices of wine or whiskey will go untasted. Pious service in Leviathan’s name will win you no favor, and in fact makes no sense as priestcraft, for to live in the modern world is to render service daily to the Gogmagogian superbeast of human commerce - whether we mean to or not, and whether we like it or not.

One facet of what some would call “religious experience” remains available to us: the principle of awe. Tremendous is Leviathan and stupendous is its power! Like a juggernaut it strides forth into a future that will not be denied it, crushing under its heel all the forces of inertia or anachronism that stupidly oppose its greedy and rapacious progress. All will be devoured; all, metabolized; and all that is useless, excreted. A spectacle such as this has not been seen on the earth since the early days of insect genesis, when the first six-legged swarms brought continents under their sway. Leviathan will surpass even this, for what are mere continents when there are whole new planets to colonize?

Join me in Hyperborea if you dare. Let us stand on the blustery peaks of frozen mountains and scan the horizon for signs and portents of Cyclopean enterprise.

I will, of course, have more to say on this. ISCHYROS DIAVOLOS!