Francis Galton
Fortnightly Review vol. 12, pp. 125-35, 1872

Lifted from Galton.org, with great respect and appreciation, so, go there for other stuff. 

An eminent authority has recently published a challenge to test the efficacy of prayer by actual experiment. I have been induced, through reading this, to prepare the following memoir for publication, nearly the whole of which I wrote and laid by many years ago, after completing a large collection of data, which I had undertaken for the satisfaction of my own conscience.

The efficacy of prayer seems to me a simple, as it is a perfectly appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific inquiry. Whether prayer is efficacious or not, in any given sense, is a matter of fact on which each man must form an opinion for himself. His decision will be based upon data more or less justly handled, according to his education and habits. An unscientific reasoner will be guided by a confused recollection of crude experience. A scientific reasoner will scrutinize each separate experience before he admits it as evidence, and will compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system.

The doctrine commonly preached by the clergy is well expressed in the most recent, and by far the most temperate and learned of theological encyclopaedias, namely, Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible. The article on ‘Prayer,’ written by the Rev. Dr. Barry, states as follows: ‘Its real objective efficacy.., is both implied and expressed (in Scripture) in the plainest terms …. We are encouraged to ask special blessings, both spiritual and temporal, in hopes that thus, and thus only, we may obtain them …. It would seem the intention of Holy Scripture to encourage all prayer, more especially intercession, in all relations and for all righteous objects.’ Dr. Hook, the present Dean of Chichester, states in his Church Dictionary, under ‘Prayer,’ that ‘the general providence of God acts through what are called the laws of nature. By this particular providence God interferes with those laws, and he has promised to interfere in behalf of those who pray in the name of Jesus …. We may take it as a general role that we may pray for that for which we may lawfully labour, and for that only.’

The phrases of our Church service amply countenance this view; and if we look to the practice of the opposed sections of the religious world, we find them consistent in maintaining it. The so-called ‘Low Church’ notoriously places absolute belief in special providences accorded to pious prayer. This is testified by the biographies of its members, the journals of its missionaries, and the ‘united prayer meetings’ of the present day. The Roman Catholics offer religious vows to avert danger; they make pilgrimages to shrines; they hang votive offerings and pictorial representations, sometimes by thousands, in their churches, of fatal accidents averted by the manifest interference of a solicited saint.

A prima facie argument in favour of the efficacy of prayer is therefore to be drawn from the very general use of it. The greater part of mankind, during all the historic ages, have been accustomed to pray for temporal advantages. How vain, it may be urged, must be the reasoning that ventures to oppose this mighty consensus of belief! Not so. The argument of universality either proves too much, or else it is suicidal. It either compels us to admit that the prayers of Pagans, of Fetish worshippers, and of Buddhists who turn praying wheels, are recompensed in the same way as those of orthodox believers; or else the general consensus proves that it has no better foundation than the universal tendency of man to gross credulity.

The collapse of the argument of universality leaves us solely concerned with a simple statistical question – are prayers answered, or are they not? There are two lines of research, by either of which we may pursue this inquiry. The one that promises the most trustworthy results is to examine large classes of cases, and to be guided by broad averages; the other, which I will not employ in these pages, is to deal with isolated instances. An author who made much use of the latter method might reasonably suspect his own judgment – he would certainly run the risk of being suspected by others – in choosing one-sided examples.

The principles are broad and simple upon which our inquiry into the efficacy of prayer must be established. We must gather cases for statistical comparison, in which the same object is keenly pursued by two classes similar in their physical but opposite in their spiritual state; the one class being prayerful, the other materialistic. Prudent pious people must be compared with prudent materialistic people, and not with the imprudent nor the vicious. Secondly, we have no regard, in this inquiry, to the course by which the answer to prayers may be supposed to operate. We simply look to the final result -whether those who pray attain their objects more frequently than those who do not pray, but who live in all other respects under similar conditions. Let us now apply our principles to different cases.

A rapid recovery from disease may be conceived to depend on many causes besides the reparative power of the patient’s constitution. A miraculous quelling of the disease may be one of these causes; another is the skill of the physician, or of the nurse; another is the care that the patient takes of himself. In our inquiry, whether prayerful people recover more rapidly than others under similar circumstances, we need not complicate the question by endeavouring to learn the channel through which the patient’s prayer may have reached its fulfillment. It is foreign to our present purpose to ask if there be any signs of a miraculous quelling of the disease, or if, through the grace of God, the physician had showed unusual wisdom, or the nurse or the patient unusual discretion. We simply look to the main issue – do sick persons who pray, or are prayed for, recover on the average more rapidly than others?

It appears that, in all countries and in all creeds, the priests urge the patient to pray for his own recovery, and the patient’s friends to aid him with their prayers; but that the doctors make no account whatever of their spiritual agencies, unless the office of priest and medical man be combined in the same individual. The medical works of modern Europe teem with records of individual illnesses and of broad averages of disease, but I have been able to discover hardly any instance in which a medical man of any repute has attributed recovery to the influence of prayer. There is not a single instance, to my knowledge, in which papers read before statistical societies have recognized the agency of prayer either on disease or on anything else. The universal habit of the scientific world to ignore the agency of prayer is a very important fact. To fully appreciate the ‘eloquence of the silence’ of medical men, we must bear in mind the care with which they endeavour to assign a sanatory value to every influence. Had prayers for the sick any notable effect, it is incredible but that the doctors, who are always on the watch for such things, should have observed it, and added their influence to that of the priests towards obtaining them for every sick man. If they abstain from doing so, it is not because their attention has never been awakened to the possible efficacy of prayer, but, on the contrary, that although they have heard it insisted on from childhood upwards, they are unable to detect its influence. Most people have some general belief in the objective efficacy of prayer, but none seem willing to admit its action in those special cases of which they have scientific cognizance.

Those who may wish to pursue these inquiries upon the effect of prayers for the restoration of health could obtain abundant materials from hospital cases, and in a different way from that proposed in the challenge to which I referred at the beginning of these pages. There are many common maladies whose course is so thoroughly well understood as to admit of accurate tables of probability being constructed for their duration and result. Such are fractures and amputations. Now it would be perfectly practicable to select out of the patients at different hospitals under treatment for fractures and amputations two considerable groups; the one consisting of markedly religious and piously befriended individuals, the other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected. An honest comparison of their respective periods of treatment and the results would manifest a distinct proof of the efficacy of prayer, if it existed to even a minute fraction of the amount that religious teachers exhort us to believe.

An inquiry of a somewhat similar nature may be made into the longevity of persons whose lives are prayed for; also that of the praying classes generally; and in both these cases we can easily obtain statistical facts. The public prayer for the sovereign of every state, Protestant and Catholic, is and has been in the spirit of our own, ‘Grant her in health long to live.’ Now, as a simple matter of fact, has this prayer any efficacy? There is a memoir by Dr. Guy, in the Journal of the Statistical Society (vol. xxii, p. 355), in which he compares the mean age of sovereigns with that of other classes of persons. His results are expressed in the following table:-

In my work on Hereditary Genius, and in the chapter on ‘Divines,’ I have worked out the subject with some minuteness on other data, but with precisely the same result. I show that the divines are not specially favoured in those worldly matters for which they naturally pray, but rather the contrary, a fact which I ascribe in part to their having, as a class, indifferent constitutional vigour. I give abundant reason for all this, and do not care to repeat myself; but I should be glad if such of the readers of this present paper who may be accustomed to statistics would refer to the chapter I have mentioned. They will find it of use in confirming what I say here. They will believe me the more when I say that I have taken considerable pains to get at the truth in the questions raised in this present memoir, and that when I was engaged upon them, I worked, so far as my material went, with as much care as I gave to that chapter on ‘Divines’; and lastly, they will understand that, when writing the chapter in question, I had all this material by me unused, which justified me in speaking out as decidedly as I did then.

A further inquiry may be made into the duration of life among missionaries. We should lay greater stress upon their mortality than upon that of the clergy, because the laudable object of a missionary’s career is rendered almost nugatory by his early death. A man goes, say to a tropical climate, in the prime of manhood, who has the probability of many years of useful life before him, had he remained at home. He has the certainty of being able to accomplish sterling good as a missionary, if he should live long enough to learn the language and habits of the country. In the interval he is almost useless. Yet the painful experience of many years shows only too clearly that the missionary is not supernaturally endowed with health. He does not live longer than other people. One missionary after another dies shortly after his arrival. The work that lay almost within the grasp of each of them lingers incompleted.

It must here be repeated, that comparative immunity from disease compels the suspension of no purely material law, if such an expression be permitted. Tropical fever, for example, is due to many subtle causes which are partly under man’s control. A single hour’s exposure to sun, or wet, or fatigue, or mental agitation, will determine an attack. Now even if God acted only on the minds of the missionaries his action might be as much to the advantage of their health as if he wrought a physical miracle. He could disincline them to take those courses which might result in mischance, such as the forced march, the wetting, the abstinence from food, or the night exposure, any one of which was competent to develop the fever that struck them down. We must not dwell upon the circumstances of individual cases, and say ‘this was a providential escape,’ or ‘that was a salutary chastisement,’ but we must take the broad averages of mortality, and, when we do so, we find that the missionaries do not form a favoured class.

The efficacy of prayer may yet further be tested by inquiry into the proportion of deaths at the time of birth among the children of the praying and the non-praying classes. The solicitude of parents is so powerfully directed towards the safety of their expected offspring as to leave no room to doubt that pious parents pray fervently for it, especially as death before baptism is considered a most serious evil by many Christians. However, the distribution of still-births appears wholly unaffected by piety. The proportion, for instance, of the still-births published in the Record newspaper and in the Times was found by me, on an examination of a particular period, to bear an identical relation to the total number of deaths. This inquiry might easily be pursued by those who consider that more ample evidence was required.

When we pray in our Liturgy ‘that the Nobility may be endued with grace, wisdom and understanding,’ we pray for that which is clearly incompatible with insanity. Does that frightful scourge spare our nobility? Does it spare very religious people more than others? The answer is an emphatic negative to both of these questions, The nobility, probably from their want of the wholesome restraints felt in humbler walks of life, and from their intermarriages, and the very religious people of all denominations, probably from their medita, tions on hell, are peculiarly subject to it. Religious madness is very common indeed.

As I have already hinted, I do not propose any special inquiry whether the general laws of physical nature are ever suspended in fulfilment of prayer: whether, for instance, success has attended the occasional prayers in the Liturgy when they have been used for rain, for fair weather, for the stilling of the sea in a storm, or for the abatement of a pestilence. I abstain from doing so for two reasons.

First, if it is proved that God does not answer one large class of prayers at all, it would be of less importance to pursue the inquiry. Secondly, the modern feeling of this country is so opposed to a belief in the occasional suspension of the general laws of nature, that an English reader would merely smile at such an investigation.

If we are satisfied that the actions of man are not influenced by prayer, even through the subtle influences of his thoughts and will, the only probable form of agency will have been disproved, and no one would care to advance a claim in favour of direct physical interferences.

Biographies do not show that devotional influences have clustered in any remarkable degree round the youth of those who, whether by their talents or social position, have left a mark upon our English history. Lord Campbell, in his preface to his Lives of the Chancellors, says, ‘There is no office in the history of any nation that has been filled with such a long succession of distinguished and interesting men as the office of Lord Chancellor,’ and that ‘generally speaking, the most eminent men, if not the most virtuous, have been selected to adorn it.’ His implied disparagement of their piety is fully sustained by an examination of their respective biographies, and by a taunt of Horace Walpole, quoted in the same preface. An equal absence of remarkable devotional tendencies may be observed in the lives of the leaders of great political parties. The founders of our great families too often owed their advancement to tricky and time-serving court-iership. The belief so frequently expressed in the Psalms, that the descendants of the righteous shall continue, and that those of the wicked shall surely fail, is not fulfilled in the history of our English peerage. Take for instance the highest class, that of the Ducal houses. The influence of social position in this country is so enormous that the possession of a dukedom is a power that can hardly be understood without some sort of calculation. There are, I believe, only twenty-seven dukes to about eight millions of adult male Englishmen, or about three dukes to each million, yet the cabinet of fourteen ministers which governs this country, and India too, commonly contains one duke, often two, and in recent times three. The political privilege inherited with a dukedom in this country is at the lowest estimate many thousand-fold above the average birth-right of Englishmen. What was the origin of these ducal families whose influence on the destiny of England and her dependencies is so enormous? Were their founders the eminently devout children of eminently pious parents? Have they and their ancestors been distinguished among the praying classes? Not so. I give in a footnote * a list of their names, which recalls many a deed of patriotism, valour, and skill, many an instance of eminent merit of the worldly sort, which we Englishmen honour six days out of the seven – many scandals, many a disgrace, but not, on the other hand, a single instance known to me of eminently prayerful qualities. Four at least of the existing ducal houses are unable to claim the title of having been raised into existence through the devout habits of their progenitors, because the families of Buc-cleuch, Grafton, St. Albans, and Richmond were thus highly ennobled solely on the ground of their being descended from Charles II and four of his mistresses, namely, Lucy Walters, Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwynne, and Louise de Querouaille. The dukedom of Cleveland may almost be reckoned as a fifth instance.

The civil liberty we enjoy in England, and the energy of our race, have given rise to a number of institutions, societies, commercial adventures, political meetings, and combinations of all sorts. Some of these are exclusively clerical, some lay, and others mixed. It is impossible for a person to have taken an active share in social life without having had abundant means of estimating for himself, and of hearing the opinion of others, on the value of a preponderating clerical element in business committees. For my own part, I never heard a favourable one. The procedure of Convocation, which, like all exclusively clerical meetings, is opened with prayer, has not inspired the outer world with much respect. The histories of the great councils of the Church are most painful to read. There is reason to expect that devout and superstitious men should be unreasonable; for a person who believes his thoughts to be inspired, necessarily accredits his prejudices with divine authority. He is therefore little accessible to argument, and he is intolerant of those whose opinions differ from his, especially on first principles. Consequently he is a bad coadjutor in business matters. It is a common weekday opinion of the world that praying people are not practical.

* Abercorn, Argyll, Athole, Beaufort, Bedford, Buccleuch, Buckingham, Cleveland, Devonshire, Grafton, Hamilton, Leeds, Leinster, Manchester, Marlborough, Montrose, Newcastle, Norfolk, Northumberland, Portland, Richmond, Roxburghe, Rutland, St. Albans, Somerset, Sutherland, Wellington

Again, there is a large class of instances where an enterprise on behalf of pious people is executed by the agency of the profane. Do such enterprises prosper beyond the average? For instance, a vessel on a missionary errand is navigated by ordinary seamen. A fleet, followed by the prayers of the English nation, carries reinforcements to quell an Indian mutiny. We do not care to ask whether the result of these prayers is to obtain favourable winds, but simply whether they ensue in a propitious voyage, whatever may be the agencies by which that result was obtained. The success of voyages might be due to many other agencies than the suspension of the physical laws that control the winds and currents; just as we showed that a rapid recovery from illness might be due to other causes than direct interference with cosmic order. It might have been put into the captain’s heart to navigate in that course and to perform those acts of seamanship which proved links in a chain that led to eventual success. A very small matter would suffice to make a great difference in the end. A vessel navigated by a man who was a good forecaster of weather and an accomplished hydrographer would considerably outstrip another that was deficient in so accomplished a commander, but otherwise similarly equipped. The perfectly instructed navigator would deviate from the most direct course by perhaps some mere trifle, first here, then there, in order to bring his vessel within favouring slants of wind and advantageous currents. A ship commanded by a captain and steered by a sailor whose hearts were miraculously acted upon in answer to prayer would unconsciously, as by instinct, or even as it were by mistake, perform these deviations from routine, which would lead to ultimate success.

The missionaries who are the most earnestly prayed for are usually those who sail on routes where there is little traffic, and therefore where there is more opportunity for the effects of secret providential overruling to display themselves than among those who sail in ordinary sea voyages. In the usual sea routes a great deal is known of the peculiarities of the seasons and currents, and of the whereabouts of hidden dangers of all kinds; their average risk is small, and the insurance is low. But when vessels are bound to ports like those sought by the missionaries the case is different. The risk that attends their voyages is largely increased, and the insurance is proportionately raised. But is the risk equally increased in respect to missionary vessels and to those of traders and slave-dealers? The comparison between the fortune that attends prayerful and non-prayerful people may here be most happily made. The missionaries are eminently among the former category, and the slave-dealers and traders we speak of in the other. Traders in the unhealthy and barbarous regions to which we refer are notoriously the most godless and reckless (on the broad average) of any of their set. We have, unfortunately, little knowledge of the sea risks of slavers, because the rates of their insurance involve the risk of capture. There is, however, a universal testimony, in the parliamentary reports on slavery, to the excellent and skilful manner in which these vessels are sailed and navigated, which is a prima facie reason for believing their sea risks to be small. As to the relative risks run by ordinary traders and missionary vessels, the insurance offices absolutely ignore the slightest difference between them. They look to the class of the vessel, and to the station to which she is bound, and to nothing else. The notion that a missionary or other pious enterprise carries any immunity from danger has never been entertained by insurance companies.

To proceed with our inquiry, whether enterprises on behalf of pious people succeed better than others when they are entrusted to profane hands, we may ask – Is a bank or other commercial undertaking more secure when devout men are among its shareholders – or when the funds of pious people, or charities, or of religious bodies are deposited in its keeping, or when its proceedings are opened with prayer, as was the case with the disastrous Royal British Bank? It is impossible to say yes. There are far too many sad experiences of the contrary.

If prayerful habits had influence on temporal success, it is very probable, as we must again repeat, that insurance offices, of at least some descriptions, would long ago have discovered and made allowance for it. It would be most unwise, from a business point of view, to allow the devout, supposing their greater longevity even probable, to obtain annuities at the same low rates as the profane. Before insurance offices accept a life, they make confidential inquiries into the antecedents of the applicant. But such a question has never been heard of as, ‘Does he habitually use family prayers and private devotions?’ Insurance offices, so wakeful to sanatory influences, absolutely ignore prayer as one of them. The same is true for insurances of all descriptions, as those connected with fire, ships, lightning, hail, accidental death and cattle sickness. How is it possible to explain why Quakers, who are most devout and most shrewd men of business, have ignored these considerations, except on the ground that they do not really believe in what they and others freely assert about the efficacy of prayer? It was at one time considered an act of mistrust in an over-ruling Providence to put lightning conductors on churches; for it was said that God would surely take care of his own. But Arago’s collection of the accidents from lightning showed they were sorely needed; and now lightning conductors are universal. Other kinds of accidents befall churches, equally with other buildings of the same class; such as architectural flaws, resulting in great expenses for repair, fires, earthquakes, and avalanches.

The cogency of all these arguments is materially increased by the recollection that many items of ancient faith have been successively abandoned by the Christian world to the domain of recognized superstition. It is not two centuries ago, long subsequent to the days of Shakespeare and other great names, that the sovereign of this country was accustomed to lay hands on the sick for their recovery, under the sanction of a regular Church service, which was not omitted from our prayer-books till the time of George II. Witches were unanimously believed in, and were regularly exorcised, and punished by law, up to the beginning of the last century. Ordeals and duels, most reasonable solutions of complicated difficulties according to the popular theory of religion, were found absolutely fallacious in practice. The miraculous power of relics and images, still so general in Southern Europe, is scouted in England. The importance ascribed to dreams, the barely extinct claims of astrology, and auguries of good or evil luck, and many other well-known products of superstition which are found to exist in every country, have ceased to be believed in by us. This is the natural course of events, just as the Waters of Jealousy and the Urim and Thummin of the Mosaic law had become obsolete in the times of the later Jewish kings. The civilized world has already yielded an enormous amount of honest conviction to the inexorable requirements of solid fact; and it seems to me clear that all belief in the efficacy of prayer, in the sense in which I have been considering it, must be yielded also. The evidence I have been able to collect bears wholly and solely in that direction, and in the face of it the onus probandi lies henceforth on the other side.

Nothing that I have said negatives the fact that the mind may be relieved by the utterance of prayer. The impulse to pour out the feelings in sound is not peculiar to Man. Any mother that has lost her young, and wanders about moaning and looking piteously for sympathy, possesses much of that which prompts men to pray in articulate words. There is a yearning of the heart, a craving for help, it knows not where, certainly from no source that it sees. Of a similar kind is the bitter cry of the hare, when the greyhound is almost upon her; she abandons hope through her own efforts, and screams- but to whom? It is a voice convulsively sent out into space, whose utterance is a physical relief. These feelings of distress and of terror are simple, and an inarticulate cry suffices to give vent to them; but the reason why Man is not satisfied by uttering inarticulate cries (though sometimes they are felt to be the most appropriate) is owing to his superior intellectual powers. His memory travels back through interlacing paths, and dwells on various connected incidents; his emotions are complex, and he prays at length.

Neither does anything I have said profess to throw light on the question of how far it is possible for Man to commune in his heart with God. We know that many persons of high intellectual gifts and critical minds look upon it as an axiomatic certainty that they possess this power, although it is impossible for them to establish any satisfactory criterion to distinguish between what may really be borne in upon them from without and what arises from within, but which, through a sham of the imagination, appears to be external. A confident sense of communion with God must necessarily rejoice and strengthen the heart, and divert it from petty cares; and it is equally certain that similar benefits are not excluded from those who on conscientious grounds are sceptical as to the reality of a power of communion. These can dwell on the undoubted fact, that there exists a solidarity between themselves and what surrounds them, through the endless reactions of physical laws, among which the hereditary influences are to be included. They know that they are descended from an endless past, that they have a brotherhood with all that is, and have each his own share of responsibility in the parentage of an endless future. The effort to familiarize the imagination with this great idea has much in common with the effort of communing with a God, and its reaction on the mind of the thinker is in many important respects the same. It may not equally rejoice the heart, but it is quite as powerful in ennobling the resolves, and it is found to give serenity during the trials of life and in the shadow of approaching death.

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THE RELIGION OF EGOISM.
A Prayer for more Bitterness.

BRETHREN, we must become more bitter. Bitterness is the best antidote to the Christian slave-pox which for two thousand years has poisoned our blood. Said Emerson (my faithful ally in this and many another matter) “The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines.” We are all pulers and whiners to-day—we are born such and rarely out-grow it. Bitterness is the only thing which can tear the bandage of Idealism from our eyes and enable us to see life as the old unseduced Greeks and Romans saw it. And when we can see life as the Greeks and Romans saw it, perhaps we will have no further use for bitterness and can then throw it away. When the poison of Idealism is extirpated, then, perhaps, will come to pass the saying of Zarathustra, ” Growth in wisdom is measured by decrease in bitterness.”

Blessed is the man who has felt the deepest and best of all bitternesses—the bitterness of one starving in the midst of plenty—and who is made a giant and a clairvoyant by that bitterness. Herein I have an advantage over Nietzsche, who unfortunately always knew where his next meal was coming from. If I-, Erwin McCall, had not been for years to all intents and purposes a DAMNED TRAMP—with never an assured meal ahead—I would never have been saved. It was this (philosophic) blessing of ever imminent starvation which made me see life as it is—bared of all its hypocrisies—made me see that ” He who feeds me governs me ” or as Bacon said ” Nations and wars go on their bellies.” It is a good starvation which also starves the ” Ideal.” Thus the tramp who has brains will learn what it took Nietzsche years of fatal devotion to literature to ascertain. If Nietzsche had had a couple of weeks’ tramping among friends and real Christians he would have learned in that time all that Montaigne, Chamfort and Co. could teach him, and the tree would have defied the lightning for another half-century.

The prospect of starvation may even save the soul of a millionaire—let us not be selfish with this last and best gift of the gods, starvation, but let us pass it round and redeem the rich from their intellectual poverty.

And then—and then—it must be said, although it will be misunderstood : only he who has been once thoroughly bitter can know how sweet love is. Man is fearfully and wonderfully made and truly our heaven and our hell are inseparably intertwined. Avaunt, logician, you have no antinomies like those of the human heart. This prayer for bitterness has relieved me immensely—if the mere aspira- tion for bitterness thus makes blessed, how ecstatic must be a deed of bitterness.

A Bible Not Borrowed from the Neighbours.

EMERSON the Egoist said ” All laws are laughable but those which men make for themselves.” It is time to say that all Bibles are to be rejected save that which we write for ourselves. The Bible of Jesus, of Goethe, of Heine, of Emerson, of Whitman, of Thoreau, of Nietzsche,—all these may help us somewhat but we must have pride enough to demand a Bible not borrowed from the neighbours. A slave may rest content with a Bible writ by another, the freeman must write his own. Vicarious suffering, vicarious salvation are out of date. We may weep over the sorrows of Jesus and Nietzsche, we may rejoice over their triumphs—but we are not saved till we weep over our own sorrows and rejoice in our own happiness, till we are deified by our own Calvary, till we can show our own Via Dolorosa, our own Gethsemane agony and exultation.

The Egoist learns to say:—”I, too, have a Divine Record—the record of my innermost griefs, sorrows, temptations, triumphs, tears and rejoicings.” We no longer accept salvation second-hand, we demand an original, an egoistic, salvation. Saved we are by love of self, pity for self, tears for our own incommunicable woe, but, last and best revelation, we are taught to strengthen and purify ourselves by laughing over our dire mistakes. Such laughter is the divinest emotion. Jove and the lions never weep, but often laugh. “The artist only reaches the last summit of his greatness when he learns how to laugh at himself “—he alone can go forward.

But some one says, Does the Religion of Egoism cure our sorrows as did the old Religion? We reply, What sorrows? Whose sorrows? The sorrows of a fool? To all such we say, The New Gospel is not milk for crying babes. We may add that the greatest injury you can do to a fool is to cure his sorrow—his only teacher. And the wise man will cure his own sorrows. After all, the New Religion deals generously enough with the sorrowing one. It makes each one of us the only God in the universe. What more do you want? And if a God cannot cure his own sorrows, the world will begin to doubt his divinity. We repeat what we learned in the cradle, that it is a shame not to have your own Bible and God in your own Ego’s home, it is a shame to be obliged to borrow these from the neighbours. Moreover the founders of new Religions have always lived above the question of consolation—and every Egoist is the founder of a new Religion.

An Egoist’s Confession of Faith in Himself.

FOR greater convenience in discerning and damning our enemies we have taken out a legal authority which permits us to divide all Egoists into two classes—philosophers and scoundrels. In our unwritten tract “Why I am an Altruist,” by A. Skinflint, we exhibit this confession of the egoist-scoundrel: “Having made a cool million by as cool a steal, I straightway endowed ten chairs for the teaching of altruism. Never was I more sincere than in so doing, for, the more altruists, the more victims for me.”

The best things are always the worst. Intemperance is only the abuse of the power of digestion. Unbridled lust is but love turned awry. Thus Egoism, the best thing in the world, may by abuse become murder, and scoundrelism of every sort. Every scoundrel is an Egoist but not every Egoist is a scoundrel.

By the egoist-philosopher (Hail to thee! death-dedicated apostle!) we mean the man who has the courage to proclaim the law of universal gravitation in ethics—that each ego is the centre towards which all things gravitate. He is the only man who wears his heart upon his sleeve for daws and even for men to peck at. I am sorry to say that he appears to be the only honest man in the world for he alone has found himself out and tells himself out. But he does more—he finds out those who think they are serving the heavenly ideal and he shows them they are fools, while the pseudo-altruist (egoist-scoundrel) says nothing but fattens on their foolishness.

It is a well-known fact that the preacher, whether of altruism or egoism, rarely practises what he preaches. In the Clarion Mr. A. M. Thompson gently chides us for devoting our “very conspicuous talents to the cause of advancing everybody’s interests but ” our own.” That’s me all over “—in fact that is pre-eminently the egoist-philosopher.. But every egoist-scoundrel must be a professed and professional altruist—every man who goes forth seeking whom he may devour must profess to be an altruist as the very condition of attracting victims to his net. But the man who avows himself an egoist scares away every possible victim from his net—or, more correctly, he throws away the net itself. Our language is not sufficiently expressive to enable us to state the paradoxes of our nature but the stern fact is that the egoist-philosopher is the only man who shows any real pity for men—the only man who shows them the only possible means of salvation. We egoist-philosophers are the only people who possess any real sympathy. Precisely because we do not prate of sympathy (the devil take this exception) do we possess the more. It is through the terrible calvary of our feelings (feelings too deep for thought) that we have fought our way to the egoistic philosophy of life—that invincible fortress defended by Epicurus on the one hand and the Stoics on the other. In combatting sympathy, we, like Nietzsche, combat the overcharged heart whose terrible inundations of sympathy would, if not ruthlessly restrained, swamp the free action of the intellect.

Be sure then of this—the man who devotes his days and nights and the money of all his dearest friends to the preaching of an egoistic philosophy, there-lay materially imperilling his awn chances in life, is necessarily nobler than the so-called altruist whose very creed is a sort of blackmail levied on the goodness and the goods of applauding fool-millions. Then the avowed Egoist and Atheist (shall we coin a word, Athegoist) who proclaims the true gospel of salvation, is not a knave though all the high-priced clerics and all the M.P.s and the whole gang of professional and endowed prostitutes declare him such; but, I repeat, he, as the only man who wears his heart upon his sleeve is the one honest man in the universe, the only man who has found himself out and told himself out. But the world with its usual supernatural and superasinine stupidity worships the scoundrel and keeps its obloquy for the honest philosopher. Such are the miracles of unreason which crown and culminate two thousand years of christian idiocy, such the result of feeding ourselves on babe’s milk, stale for twenty centuries by the clock.

Verily, we egoist-philosophers, we “destroyers of false hopes, are the true Messiahs”; we sacrifice ourselves for the sins of the past and for the happiness of future generations; we are the only genuine martyrs, for whom no subscriptions are raised, no civil list exists. In an age given over to the worship of altruism, the unmitigated egoist-philosopher must necessarily be a martyr. I mention Nietzsche in a madhouse and Stirner starved to death. But there are others.

The Calvary of Egoism.

EVEN the Egoist has his Calvary, but it is a home-made Calvary, just as the Egoist’s Bible is home-made. It is of suicide I speak, of a death self-decreed and self-executed, not of a death forced on one by a mob of fools and fanatics. (“Natural death is a coward’s death. We should desire a different kind of death—voluntary; conscious, not accidental or by surprise.”—Nietzsche)

It is time for the Egoist to give to the world a new Stabat Mater. The egoist-suicide speaks from his Cross with a hitherto forbidden eloquence—he speaks these bitter truths which man has hitherto lacked the courage for uttering :

Mother, behold thy prattling babe,
Behold the Suicide thou hast made!

Yes, mother, thou art the cause of this suicide. Listen to me, listen to this voice from the grave : There was not a lie perfectly calculated to unfit me for life which you did not faithfully instil into me. You did your work most perfectly. You poisoned me from my earliest years by teaching to me as the very word of God and means of eternal salvation, every superstition and every delusion which could deliver me bound into the hands of all the Shylocks and all the Judases of earth. I spent the best years of my life believing the Bible and trying to live it—and here am I. I would prefer to entrust myself to the mercy of the Devil (if one existed) than to such a fool of a mother as you have been to me. Truly, mother, thou has been a benefactor to man. Thou madest me (too late) a philosopher and I must bless thee for that?. (I would have truly blessed thee if thou hadst made me a philosopher in the cradle). Thou madest me a suicide and others will bless thee for that. Verily it is no small credit to thee that thou didst remove the curse and the curser thou didst create.
Will Christian journals please copy? And now, brethren, receive the benediction—”Here’s to the health of the next one that dies.” Thus endeth the fabrication for the first day.

-LORD ERWIN MCCALL.

No related posts.

THE LAND OF THE ALTRUISTS.
A Parable for the Infant Class.

If you start from the South Pole and sail due north, you will come to a wonderful country inhabited by the people called Altruists.

They are called so because they prefer other people’s happiness to their own.

They are a very industrious, hard-working, uncomplaining people, forever toiling from daylight till dark, making all kinds of useful and luxurious things; yet so unwilling are they to enjoy the fruits of their labour, so anxious for somebody else to be happy at their expense, that they have made this very ingenious and complete arrangement to secure that result.
They have ordained that everybody who has produced a thousand dollars’ worth of goods shall receive from the rest of the community sixty dollars a year ; he who has made or obtained in any way ten thousand dollars’ worth shall receive six hundred dollars a year ; and so on in proportion.

Now, it is easily seen that, as the people to whom these stipends are paid are at liberty to go on working and making enough to live on, they are able to lay by the amounts paid to them by the community. After a while these amounts become so large that they need not work at all, for all the rest of the Altruist community are pledged to support them, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, not only till death, but forever.

Such sweet and unselfish dispositions have these Altruists.

There are getting to be a good many of these people who are supported by the Altruists.

Two or three million at a guess in every twenty or thirty million families do not work, but are paid because they have so much already. They are getting very bossy, too, these stipendiaries of the workers, and begin to hold themselves very loftily, and despise the unselfish workers as dirty, ignorant, low creatures, unmindful of the fact that it is only because the workers are Altruists that they enjoy providing luxuries for others-rather than for themselves.

It is getting to be rather hard scratching, too, for the workers, Altruists though they be, who enjoy hunger and suffering; for to the objects of their care, the supported class, they have given, not only all the houses and furniture, and all but a little of the butter and meat and bread, but the very land itself, so that now, when the Altruist workers want to work still harder and to cultivate more land to support the rapidly-growing numbers of the Aristocrats, they find themselves forbidden by these very Aristocrats to use the land which they have given them.

Clearly a catastrophe must occur. Although the Altruists enjoy starving as long as they have the pleasure of seeing the Aristocrats, as they call those whom they support, have plenty, there is a physical limit to the process of starvation, and, when the Altruists begin to diminish in number, the Aristocrats must also dwindle.

What the outcome will be no man can prophesy—a relapse into slavery at least, which the Altruists would no doubt enjoy even more than their present arrangements; but there is a chance that their natures may change : they may become Egoists, and no longer take pleasure in giving to those who give nothing in return. Then there will be no Aristocrats, and everybody who is not an Altruist will have a much better time.

—John Beverley Robinson in “Liberty”

Related posts:

1. “No Man’s Land” – free ebook by Jack Donovan
2. You are a racist… Shirley Sherrod does not “come to Jesus”, she came to the Class Struggle (UPDATE x2)

DARWINISM IN SOCIOLOGY:
A REPLY TO NIETZSCHE’S CRITICS.

EVERY consistent system, in its ultimate analysis, is made up of a comparatively small number of principles. If each of these principles is firmly established, then the system stands as a whole ; if only some of them are established, the system is partially true and perhaps partially false ; and if all its principles are disproved, then the system is absolutely worthless. Instead, therefore, of examining seriatim all the objections—some of them very trivial—that are brought against Nietzsche’s system, let us briefly examine its most important principles, and if we find these firmly established or self-evident, then most of the objections will vanish of their own accord in candid, truth-loving minds.

1. In so far as there is a moral end at all, the highest social excellence, strength and vigour, is the only end that can be justified. The denial of this principle involves the absurdity that an inferior degree of social excellence is preferable to a higher social condition.

2. Human beings are not equal. The fact is obvious to everyone who is not wilfully blind. Those, Ito., ever, who wish to know the extent of the inequality and understand the matter fully in its scientific bearings, should consult Mr. Francis Galton’s ” Hereditary Genius,” and his other works on the subject.*

3. Individuals, healthy and well-constituted in mind and body, instinctively seek their further self-development, their higher physical and mental excellence, and the perpetuation of their type.

4. The highest excellence, the greatest strength and vigour of the social organism and of the human type, can only be attained by the further self-development of the physically and mentally superior individuals.

5. It is for the interest of the human species with a view to its further advancement, that the better class of individuals should have greater advantages than inferior individuals. We shall regard this principle as obvious until the time comes when agriculturists and horticulturists (much wiser men than ethiculturists), with a view to raising the best crops, give to inferior plants and weeds the same advantageous conditions of growth as the best plants. It is therefore absurd to advocate equality of opportunity, Semi-idiots should not have the advantage of a university education, and should not be admitted to the British Museum Library. And it is still more absurd to advocate, as many ethiculturists appear to do, that the inferior class should be allowed to breed like vermin, and that their spawn should be supported at the cost of the better classes.

6. The interests of superior and inferior individuals are necessarily antagonistic ; there has been a continuous conflict between them, and the inferior class have now gained a temporary ascendancy. The struggle for existence is universal among the lower animals ; it is therefore strange that the struggle should be regarded as something abnormal among human beings. The conflict in the human species is however disguised ; it is waged not so much with carnal as with spiritual weapons. Paul himself confesses that it is so ; and the work which Paul performed in the world is the most important of all studies for the Darwinian. Paul may be said to have patented the most effective imposture ever devised for giving advantage to the inferior class in the struggle for existence—namely, the system for “saving sinners ” ; and by so doing he has perhaps done more harm in the world than all the other scourges. of humanity taken together. To be sure the salvation promised is in another world, but the real purpose of the system—to save unworthy individuals in the present world —is thereby the better concealed. Christianity is the artful device by means of which 1. the slave class has successfully accomplished a revolt in half the world. We are greatly indebted to Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace for being the first to show the immense role which mimicry (the falsehood, imposture and hypocrisy of the lower animals) plays in nature ; it would surely be surprising if something of a similar kind did not present itself among human beings. All the devices of ascetic priests are of the nature of mimicry, they are devices for enabling inferior beings to maintain themselves in the hard struggle for existence in which they cannot compete on equal terms with the strong and healthy. Christianity is the ascetic religion par excellence; it is such an extraordinarily perfect system of mimicry and imposture, especially in its ethical aspects, that it is no wonder that it imposed on the most intelligent men in past ages, and held the world in bondage for nearly 2000 years. When falsehood plays such an immense role in nature, he who acts on the maxim ” Truth at all costs,” will soon find by hitter experience that ” honesty is the worst policy ” in dealing with deceitful and dishonest men who have no regard for the welfare of the human race.

7. Owing to the breaking up of the old social groups incidental to new modes of living, a considerable mal-adjustment of social conditions has taken place in historic times, and socialism and commercialism being both unsatisfactory, mankind is now in quest of a new system of organization, under which advantages will once more be reaped approximately proportionate to natural ability. Some 2500 years ago the social conditions under which human beings lived began to alter considerably in the more civilized portions of the world, owing especially to the extension of commerce (which followed the increased use of iron) and the introduction of money. Under the commercial and financial system with its substitution of gold for merit, advantages no longer accrue so approximately in proportion to natural ability, as under a non-monetary system which obliges every one to stand on his own merits. (Those who object to the word merit may put natural capacity in its place). Theognis, the Greek poet,** pointed out at a very early date the social evils which resulted from the new order of things ; the mal-adjustment, however, has tended rather to increase than diminish in the course of ages. Mankind has consequently been groping about for two and a half millenniums for a new social system under which to live. This mal-adjustment gave the special opportunity for Christianity to spring up, which caused the revolt of the slaves by its socialistic and ultra-socialistic teaching. But socialism, Christian or non-Christian, can never be the basis of a sound system of society. The commercial system, notwithstanding the loud assurances of professional political economists and the editors of commercial newspapers, is equally far from being the best system for the distribution of social advantages. Though still inheriting some of the instincts of the heroic age, we live at present for the most part under an anarchical, make-shift system, a hybrid growth of commercialism and Christian socialism, under which advantages are distributed largely at hap-hazard, and not necessarily to the deserving, as they would be under the ideal social system. We must, however, find such a system ; we must find men who can determine the merits and demerits, the valuable and the non-valuable qualities of their fellow-men, and who can reconstitute society on a new basis of genuine worth. From Nietzsche’s point of view. therefore, which regards commercialism as an altogether imperfect system, the special question of rent and interest does not come up for discussion. I’m king rent and interest, however, as facts which exist at present, we should look at them with reference to the moral end we have in view—in so far as they are a hindrance to its attainment, we should try to counteract their evil influence.

Considering societies as organisms, and re-examining the subject according to analogy,.we reach much the same results. Individuals are not analogous to the members of a physical organism, they are merely analogous to the cells, as Haeckel, Weismann, Roux, and others have shown. The individual cell, therefore, even in the most important organs, is of so comparatively small account, that, reasoning from analogy, we might conclude that not only the lack of equal advantages among certain human beings is in no way injurious to the social organism, but even their very extinction is a matter of indifference, especially if provision is made for others to take their place. Analogy, in fact, teaches us much more. Whole organs or groups of cells are no longer nourished when they are no longer needed, and are consequently lost (e.g., the four toes of the horse, the hind limbs of the whale, etc.) ; we should therefore expect that whole groups of individuals will be eliminated from the social organism, when they no longer serve a useful purpose. Further, there is not equality of opportunity in the cells of a physical organism : the cells that compose our little toes, for example, have not the advantage of the careful protection which the cells of the brain and spinal cord possess ; consequently we may conclude that individuals destined to regulate society should have better opportunities than those who are likely to be comparatively worthless. It has also been shown by Roux that a struggle for existence goes on among the cells, and in all the parts of an organism ; consequently we may expect that conflicts will take place among individuals and classes composing the same society. Human societies, however, are only analogous to low physical organisms ; they are therefore able to exist under a variety of forms, and under favourable conditions many awkward and ill-constituted social organisms may continue to live. Analogy thus confirms the conclusions previously arrived at.

THOMAS COMMON.

* Mr. Francis Galton’s investigations of the subject of human inequality furnish a firm basis on which an anonymous German writer has recently built up a theory of ” social aristocracy.” in a very important book, entitled, ” Service of the People (Volksdienst) by a Social Aristocrat.” The author’s erthusiasm for the abolition of hereditary property reminds one of Henry George’s enthusiasm for his panacea.

** Nietzsche was greatly influenced by the writings of Theognis; and Darwin also recognised their importance by quoting a passage from them on the deteriorating effect of money, in his Descent of Man.

Related posts:

1. Satanism as Weltanschauung, a lecture in 9 parts (plus Q&A bonus)

(I posted this in 2010 and for an unknown, and disconcerting reason it’s no longer on my blog. I went to look for it yesterday and couldn’t find it, so I transcribed it once more.)

Know thyself. —Solon.
Knowledge is power. —Bacon.
To thine own self be true. —Shakespeare.
The beautiful is always severe. —Segur.
If it be right to me, it is right. —Stirner.
Moderation is the pleasure of the wise. —Voltaire
God helps them (only) who help themselves. —Franklin.
Love is the union of a want and a sentiment. —Lamartine.
Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting. —Shakespeare.
To scoff at philosophy is to act as a true philosopher. —Pascal.
very mortal is relieved by speaking of his misfortunes. —Chénier.
Man is Creation’s master-piece. But who says so?—Man. —Gavarni.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. —Voltaire.
He who is devoted to everybody is devoted to nobody. —Delavigne.
God is generally on the side of the strongest battalions. —Napoleon.
Under the freest constitution ignorant people are still slaves. —Condorcet.
In jealousy there is usually more self-love than love. —Rochefoucauld.
Goodness, for the most part, is but indolence, or impotence. —Ib.
When our vices leave us, we flatter ourselves we are leaving them. —Ib.
The greatest of all pleasures is to give pleasure to one we love. —Boufflers.
We like those to whom we do good better than those who do us good. —Saint-Réal.
Trust in God and [that is, so far as you] keep your powder dry.—Cromwell.
It is easier to be good for everybody, than to be good for somebody. —A. Dumas fils.
The more honest a man is, the less he affects the airs of a saint. —Lavater.
To know man, borrow the ear of the blind and the eye of the deaf. —Ib.
Who despises all that is despicable, is made to be impressed with all that
is grand. —Ib.
Everybody exclaims against ingratitude. Are there so many benefactors ? —Bougeart.
A woman by whom we are loved is a vanity ; a woman whom we love is a. religion. —Giradin.
Diversity of opinion proves that things are only what we think them. —Montaigne.
To love is to ask of another the happiness that is lacking in ourselves. —Rochepedre.
Virtue is so praiseworthy that wicked people practice it from self-interest. —Vauvenargues.
There is pleasure in meeting the eyes of those to whom we have done good. —La Bruyère.
The art of conversation consists less in showing one’s own wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of others. —Ib.
Egoism is another name for self-preservation ; the egoist, after providing: for self, turns altruist. —Tilden.
High positions are like the summit of high, steep rocks: eagles and reptiles alone can reach them. —Mme. Necker.
The men of future generations will yet win many a liberty of which we do, not even feel the want. —Stirner.
One is free in proportion as one is strong ; there is no real liberty save that which one takes for one’s self. —lb.
There are persons who do not know how to waste their time alone and hence become the scourge of busy people. —Bonald.
Not to enjoy one’s youth when one is young, is to imitate the miser who starves beside his treasures. —Mme. Louise Colet.
All passions are good when one masters them ; all are bad when one is a. slave to them. [The same is true of ideas]. —Rousseau.
You can tell more about a man’s character by trading horses with him once than you can by hearing him talk for a year in prayer meeting. —American Maxim.
Forget this superstition (that the day of noble deeds is past), steep your souls in Plutarch, and through believing in his heroes, dare to believe in yourselves. —Nietzsche.
To be regardful of others within reason is intelligent egoism, but it is necessary to distinguish those who are worthy of our regard from those who are not. —Tak Kak.
The discoverer of a great truth well knows that it may be useful to other men, and, as a greedy with-holding would bring him no enjoyment, he communicates it. —Stirner.
Everywhere the strong have made the laws and oppressed the weak ; and,. if they have sometimes consulted the interests of society, they have always. forgotten those of humanity. —Turgot.
Napoleon the exploiter said, ” The heart of a statesman should be in his head.” The exploited will never be saved till they make the brain the seat of their patriotic affections.
Religion and moralism say that we may have passions, but we must not allow our passions to enslave us. The egoist extends the suggestion to include ideas. He has ideas, but he remains the master of them All the ideas he has he will use as he sees fit. If of a speculative intellectual turn, the egoist cannot doubt that there is the greatest good for all in egoism, and as he can find. satisfaction in proving it, he may undertake to do so. —Tak Kak.

Related posts:

1. THE RELIGION OF EGOISM. A Prayer for more Bitterness.

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The Way of Men answers the question: “What is Masculinity?”

The so-called experts give the answers that suit their masters. They tell just-so stories to protect their ideology, their religion, their way of life.  They look to women for a nod of approval before speaking. They give socially acceptable answers and half-truths.

If what they have to say resonates with men, it is only because they manage to hint at the real answer.

The real answer is that The Way of Men is The Way of The Gang.

Manliness — being good at being a man — isn’t about impressing women. That’s a side effect of manliness.

Manliness isn’t about being a good man. There are plenty of bad guys – real jerks –who are manlier than you are, and you know it.

Manliness is about demonstrating to other men that you have what it takes to survive tough times.

Manliness is about our primal nature. It’s about what men have always needed from each other if they wanted to win struggles against nature, and against other men.

The Way of Men describes the four tactical virtues of the survival gang.

The Way of Men explains what men want, and why they are rapidly disengaging from our child-proofed modern world.

The Way of Men examines the alternatives, and sketches a path out of our “bonobo masturbation society” through a new Dark Age.

—– Early Reviews —-

“A thought provoking read on what it means to be a man today in a world that’s increasingly finding masculinity undesirable and un-needed. Donovan makes bold and unapologetic arguments on what The Way of Men needs to be in the future.”

Brett McKay, The Art of Manliness, Manvotionals

“In an age where traditional masculinity is disparaged, deconstructed, feared and scorned, Jack Donovan has engaged in the necessary task of reconstructing what masculinity is, and how it fits into modern society. It seems unlikely that one could learn manhood from a book, but this would be a good place to try.”

Scott Locklin; Writer, Taki’s Magazine

“Absolutely love this book!  I found Jack’s comments on the underlying primal instincts that motivate men and what can generate unity within a group to be both thought provoking and spot on from a leadership perspective.”

Chris Duffin, AAPF and APA record-holding competitive powerlifter, coach, and gym owner.

“Peering behind the layers of civility we indulge in as a matter of pretense, Donovan explores the primal relationship between tribal identity and masculinity, and emerges endorsing a type of Nietzschean struggle for significance through conflict”

Brett Stevens, Amerika.org

“The Way of Men reads like a primer for a generation that didn’t know it needed one. Donovan’s athletic prose reads quickly, and cuts straight to the point: Only in a coddled nanny-state could entire generations of boys grow up never having to put themselves to the hazards that harden boys into men.”

Max. US Army, Infantry.

“While others in the “Man-centric” blogosphere prefer to critique crazy feminists or theorize about the best way to pick up unstable women at bars, Jack Donovan has taken up the more important, anthropological task of asking who “the Man” really is.”

Richard Spencer; Editor, Alternative Right

“Jack Donovan’s latest book, The Way of Men, cuts through the Marxist and politically correct platitudes suffocating mainstream sociology and anthropology to deliver an insightful, original, and data-driven analysis of tribalism, gender relations, and the tortured state of manliness in the post-modern age.”

Matt Parrott, Blogger and Author of  Hoosier Nation

“Jack Donovan’s The Way of Men is an essential book on the nature of masculinity and why it is under assault in the modern world. But it is much more than that, for understanding masculinity is essential to understanding politics and the dynamics of human history. Thus, despite its accessible and unassuming style, The Way of Men is also a work of political philosophy. Indeed, it is a profound critique of liberal modernity. Hegel claimed that history began when men dueled to the death over honor. According to Donovan, the “end of history” is not merely a global, homogeneous, consumer society, for the defining characteristic of modernity is emasculation. The recovery of masculinity, therefore, requires unplugging from modern society, forming small-scale, bonded male groups (which Donovan calls gangs), and ultimately starting history and politics all over again. The Way of Men is revolutionary in the true sense of the word. This is the best book on masculinity since Fight Club.”

Greg Johnson, Ph.D., author of Confessions of a Reluctant Hater  

Related posts:

1. “No Man’s Land” – free ebook by Jack Donovan
2. “Men Versus The Man” HL Mencken & Robert Rives LaMonte
3. 8 ways men try using eugenics to get laid

People wait for tragedies so that they can use them as political fodder to whip up the masses.
These people don’t care what tragedy, they don’t care about the particulars of it, and they quickly forget the actors involved once they’re done with using it. That’s a reality.
Anti-X folks were all over this as soon as they realized they could politically profit from it. They only care about their political goals, and they weep crocodile tears to get there. They see it as their job to maximize the outrage.
Pro-X folks are justifiably nervous and also do not actually care about the actors involved. They see their job as to minimize the outrage or defensively stir up counter-outrage.
We all care about the incident as much as it pleases or displeases our self-interest: that’s human nature.

further..
The same thing occurs with charity, people only support charities insomuch as it gratifies their ego.
How many times have any of you known someone to support a charity that they didn’t have some personal investment in. Either their kid is retarded or has developed a disease, or someone they admire (and want to emulate) has taken up the cause.
Dudes fly the flag for X cause a hot chick they want to bang is really into it, and chicks routinely adopt their boyfriends agendas.
99% of the time, what is touted as “charity” is actually a form of self-flattery or self-defense.
1% of the time, someone needs to get rid of “extra money” for tax reasons.
—-
Within minutes of posting this Yahoo News gives me this headline:
“Obama: ‘If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon’”
Self-flattery, self-interest, self-defense.

No related posts.

The notice of this blog post will be my 1,000th Tweet. Dunno if that’s a good thing or not.

Since my last post, there have been a few things to post about, but I’m going to be a little lazy here and post short descriptions and links:

• “Book and Rifle Club” shirt design through ASP Apparel. ( news | direct | FB page )
• The Compleat Witch Illustrated Bibliography Project ( news | direct | FB page )
• “Slaughter’s Law” was coined by Jack Donovan (and I approve) ( direct )

At the Comfort Diner in New York, recommended!

Since I’m in the listing mood, here are a few podcasts I’ve been enjoying since I posted about them last:

• Radiolab
• Uhh Yeah Dude
• The Human Bible
• Skeptoid
• Radio Derb
• Freakonomics

And Adam of 9Sense did this:

Related posts:

1. I (nerd) Podcasts – Spring 2010
2. Book Nerd :: Where someone asks me to recommend books…
3. BookNerd: Thanks for giving myself more books…