As a “Nietzschean Vitalist ⚡️💪😂” who hates “-ISMs” & ideology of all kinds I absolutely endorse the steel manning of my worldview.
I’ve never seen a necessary conflict between vitalism & Christianity etc…In fact I think churches would be excellent nodes for promoting vitalism as such “your body is a temple” etc… If churches started to value health & beauty, the energy levels of congregations would increase & thus the aesthetics of such institutions. People would take more “pride” in their appearance & aspirations, create religious art, and thus uplift the culture more generally. Even secular atheists would attend church more just to be in the presence of something transcendent & celebrate divinity through example. Vitalism is just valuing health, beauty, & greatness.
I really enjoyed this conversation! and I would be happy to listen to more like this. My favorite convo since you had the girl with the eco-radical parents on. But that said you are putting out content fast enough that I can't listen to half of it anyway, so I'm not sure it would make a lot of difference on the margin to my likelihood of tuning in.
Yeah, the problem is that putting out content 7 days a week maximizes my total view count and new subscriptions, but that means no one can consume all of it. If I cater to the existing viewers, I'm going to remain poor for longer and this project will fail. If I cater to new viewers by maximizing output, older viewers will feel some kind of FOMO.
TBH I don't feel FOMO as much as I feel like I can't archive them in the feed and so it just becomes clutter.
But I'm a fan of the project and I'd prefer you to take the approach that will succeed better. I will have to become stronger over here and admit to myself when it is unrealistic for me to listen to something.
You could talk about Israel Palestine where clearly a vitalist would support Israel and a Christian slave moralist/priest class would support Palestine,instead spending one hour and not getting much out of it.
But only if one accepted the Zionist narrative. One could make an argument that Hamas is more vitalist than the IDF as they are willing to go to greater lengths to win unlike Israel. Israel is a divided society like Western Europe and the U.S.
Based on some of the discussion I think you could easily characterize Hamas as more "vitalist"--they very much embody the mindset of Viking raiders who just rush into a foreign settlement, kill all the men, steal everything, take the women as sex slaves, and then burn it all down for fun. That appears to be pretty much literally what they would do to Israel if they could. But then there's the contradiction that their actual strength is so sorely lacking compared to the much less "vitalist" Israelis.
I'm not sure how you factor that in or how much it's supposed to matter, which I guess goes back to the root of the whole discussion about "vitalism," it's not clear what the boundaries are with this term. If we just define it as being a literal animal-tier barbarian who wants to rape and kill everything, why would anyone believe in that as a serious ideology? That's just a vulgar form of post-modernism.
That reminds me of comment, possibly from Napoleon, about how one-on-one a Frenchman was no match for an Egyptian Mameluke; however, 10-on-10 is break even, and 100-on-100 the Frenchmen defeat the Mamelukes hands down.
In modern warfare logistics and general coordination ability are worth far more than raw aggression and physical power.
So Vitalists have the dilemma of focusing on raw aggression and concluding that Haitian migrants are the Real Vitalists, or focusing on coordination ability and ultimately concluding that Christians are the Real Vitalists.
The problem is that Israel is not an independent state reliant entirely on its own resources but dependent on the United States for its long-term survival both financially and militarily. The strategic picture might be less lopsided without U.S. support.
The same is true of Hamas, isn't it? I imagine that if all aid to *both sides* from any external source were cut off tomorrow, Israel would still win the ensuing conflict quite easily.
The assistance Israel receives dwarfs anything Hamas gets but aside from that without the U.S. umbrella neighboring countries might be more directly involved in support of Hamas. The only thing preventing an all-out war is American bribery of Egypt, Jordan, KSA, along with puppet regimes propped up by ‘foreign aid.’ Unfortunately the U.S. will likely support Israel until the empire collapses and even then go the last dying gasp of the last neocon or deep state functionary. Israel’s biggest trump card is its Ashkenazi elite running it as opposed to the dumber Arab populations surrounding the statelet.
Vitalism is a modernist phenomenon. Its appearance means that what has been tacit or taken for granted has become up for grabs. This is true of nationality, religion, race, economic creeds, etc. When people start connecting whiteness and will, for example, you know that European civilization is on its way out and something else is emerging.
Attack, attack, attack. World War I and its cult of the offensive remains the paradigmatic vitalist conflict. Generals weren't just refighting the Franco-Prussian War where Napoleon III repeatedly allowed Moltke to take the initiative. WWI was also when Henri Bergson's élan vital was at the height of its popularity. Vitalism here is an essential, spontaneous energy driving human evolution and development through continual growth, novelty, change, and creation, emphasizing the unique, indeterminate, and unpredictable. It existed alongside impressionism in other areas of culture.
The conflict was initially a disaster because it was led by aristocratic WASP-types that elevated amateurism in all things as a supreme virtue. Do a little bit of hunting, a little bit of tennis, a little bit of polo, and a few gatherings at country estates here and there. Doing anything too serious, even reading about military history and strategy, was passé, something vulgar and bourgeois, like the Costco family. The Russian autocracy tended to keep mediocrities in essential positions; in Germany, the Junker elite was disgusted by the urban masses and demanded obedience, doing nothing to suggest that public opinion mattered. You get the idea.
The genuinely creative people who shined during the conflict had liberal middle-class virtues. Consider John Monash, raised in the Australian outback by a family of Jewish shopkeepers. He earned degrees in engineering, liberal arts, and law, eventually became accomplished in music and linguistics, and founded a consulting firm for bridge and railway construction. The man was an organizational genius, a "big business" type of commander that would be common later, someone who could integrate all aspects of a complete battle plan, from combined arms to bringing hot meals to the front.
Another example is Sir Arthur Currie, a vulgar and profane man who grew up as a farm boy in British Columbia. His background was in insurance and real estate speculation. Astonishingly, especially given the context of the war, his troops never failed to capture an objective, were never driven out of a consolidated position, and never lost a gun. His recipe included detailed planning and preparation, reconnaissance, rehearsals, decentralized command, integration of engineering units, and new tactics like creeping barrages and counter-battery fire.
In short, industrial progress made amateurs out of the professionals and professionals out of the amateurs.
In philosophy, Bertrand Russell took down Bergson's ideas of infinity and continuity in a chapter of Our Knowledge of the External World, introducing mathematics and logic into philosophy to rigorously analyze these concepts, suggesting that philosophers should professionalize their craft, which opened the door to the systems of people like Carnap and Quine. Technology in the hands of administrative skill put an end to vitalism 1.0. Fascism -- the Nazis, the Italian futurists -- would reboot it on a technological basis, with mass media, the top-down shaping of public opinion, etc. But if Hiroshima and Auschwitz didn't kill the idea, Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 certainly put the kibosh on any respectable notion of a life force.
Richard spencer, an aristocratic type? The guy has been a plant and a honeypot organizer from the start. I don’t know why anyone gives him the time of day.
Yep, I tend to agree with the idea that "everyone has their own vitalism", and that the actual vitalists (as in, the ones who want to "Initiate Operation Africa" or rev up the "Biodiesel Refineries") are really nothing like the Substack variant of Vitalists. Almost like comparing a pygmy species on an isolated island to the more well-known species, like Pygmy Hippoes or Pygmy Elephants.
I also appreciate the points being made about "might makes right". The term "right" here really means "right to something", not moral correctness. There are times where the "right" guys lose the battle, whether or not you think there is an objective "right" guys. And yes, the moral "rightness" is more ascribed to "excellence" (arete) than "might". But the law of nature is might. I would say that the Vitalists do have a love for good specimens, which are sharp edges of Nature honed by its own internal winds. And I think BAP also explains in one of his Vidyas how "Vitalism" is intertwined with a sort of cosmological stoicism, where the world is recognized as an organic process. What the Stoics called the "World-Soul". The Platonists also believed in the World-Soul but believed in a greater principle of the Intellect, the source of ideas and whatnot. Stoics may or may not entirely believe in the "World-Soul" as the source of everything, which is not really a "thing" but a process or animation. Which is why sometimes you will see people call Stoics Materialists.
Very good points about Pindar... Brilliant composer! Despite, ehh, some things he said about the Gods. He clarifies that he altered those myths to replace even more unwholesome myths, so I do not think people should hate him for being a product of his times.
I've been thinking of a sort of "sportocracy" lately, where you get "ELO" for being good at some sort of game or sport. But the sport can't be one where you bash your head in like UFC, it should be a great sport. One that combines skill, strength, endurance, and cunning... And one that does not give you CTE to a significant extent. It would be like Pokemon where the Pokemon champion is the highest person in society and every town has its "gym leaders" and they are the local best. Or like Naruto or some shit. Idk I never watched that show. It is very difficult to strive for bestness these days because of the massification of everything. There are more people in New York City today than there were in the entire Greek world in the 5th century BC. Albeit, maybe people of lower quality, but it goes to show how hard it is to be "top". If we were in Yarvin world where everyone lived in one of ten thousand patchworks, maybe it would be easier. People would feel like they as individuals are more important.
>I've been thinking of a sort of "sportocracy" lately, where you get "ELO" for being good at some sort of game or sport. But the sport can't be one where you bash your head in like UFC, it should be a great sport. One that combines skill, strength, endurance, and cunning... And one that does not give you CTE to a significant extent. It would be like Pokemon where the Pokemon champion is the highest person in society and every town has its "gym leaders" and they are the local best. Or like Naruto or some shit.<
Holy SHIT wowza it would be just liek anime but in REAL LIEF!!!1!1
Great conversation!
As a “Nietzschean Vitalist ⚡️💪😂” who hates “-ISMs” & ideology of all kinds I absolutely endorse the steel manning of my worldview.
I’ve never seen a necessary conflict between vitalism & Christianity etc…In fact I think churches would be excellent nodes for promoting vitalism as such “your body is a temple” etc… If churches started to value health & beauty, the energy levels of congregations would increase & thus the aesthetics of such institutions. People would take more “pride” in their appearance & aspirations, create religious art, and thus uplift the culture more generally. Even secular atheists would attend church more just to be in the presence of something transcendent & celebrate divinity through example. Vitalism is just valuing health, beauty, & greatness.
I’ll have to listen to this one, in my experience a lot of people misuse the term vitalist.
I really enjoyed this conversation! and I would be happy to listen to more like this. My favorite convo since you had the girl with the eco-radical parents on. But that said you are putting out content fast enough that I can't listen to half of it anyway, so I'm not sure it would make a lot of difference on the margin to my likelihood of tuning in.
Yeah, the problem is that putting out content 7 days a week maximizes my total view count and new subscriptions, but that means no one can consume all of it. If I cater to the existing viewers, I'm going to remain poor for longer and this project will fail. If I cater to new viewers by maximizing output, older viewers will feel some kind of FOMO.
TBH I don't feel FOMO as much as I feel like I can't archive them in the feed and so it just becomes clutter.
But I'm a fan of the project and I'd prefer you to take the approach that will succeed better. I will have to become stronger over here and admit to myself when it is unrealistic for me to listen to something.
Here's my archive: deepleft.substack.com/sitemap/2024
If your inbox is cluttered you can also just filter my emails out of your inbox.
An ‘American’ is anyone residing in the United States Empire and as is about as meaningful as the term ‘Soviet.’
You could talk about Israel Palestine where clearly a vitalist would support Israel and a Christian slave moralist/priest class would support Palestine,instead spending one hour and not getting much out of it.
But only if one accepted the Zionist narrative. One could make an argument that Hamas is more vitalist than the IDF as they are willing to go to greater lengths to win unlike Israel. Israel is a divided society like Western Europe and the U.S.
Based on some of the discussion I think you could easily characterize Hamas as more "vitalist"--they very much embody the mindset of Viking raiders who just rush into a foreign settlement, kill all the men, steal everything, take the women as sex slaves, and then burn it all down for fun. That appears to be pretty much literally what they would do to Israel if they could. But then there's the contradiction that their actual strength is so sorely lacking compared to the much less "vitalist" Israelis.
I'm not sure how you factor that in or how much it's supposed to matter, which I guess goes back to the root of the whole discussion about "vitalism," it's not clear what the boundaries are with this term. If we just define it as being a literal animal-tier barbarian who wants to rape and kill everything, why would anyone believe in that as a serious ideology? That's just a vulgar form of post-modernism.
That reminds me of comment, possibly from Napoleon, about how one-on-one a Frenchman was no match for an Egyptian Mameluke; however, 10-on-10 is break even, and 100-on-100 the Frenchmen defeat the Mamelukes hands down.
In modern warfare logistics and general coordination ability are worth far more than raw aggression and physical power.
So Vitalists have the dilemma of focusing on raw aggression and concluding that Haitian migrants are the Real Vitalists, or focusing on coordination ability and ultimately concluding that Christians are the Real Vitalists.
The problem is that Israel is not an independent state reliant entirely on its own resources but dependent on the United States for its long-term survival both financially and militarily. The strategic picture might be less lopsided without U.S. support.
The same is true of Hamas, isn't it? I imagine that if all aid to *both sides* from any external source were cut off tomorrow, Israel would still win the ensuing conflict quite easily.
The assistance Israel receives dwarfs anything Hamas gets but aside from that without the U.S. umbrella neighboring countries might be more directly involved in support of Hamas. The only thing preventing an all-out war is American bribery of Egypt, Jordan, KSA, along with puppet regimes propped up by ‘foreign aid.’ Unfortunately the U.S. will likely support Israel until the empire collapses and even then go the last dying gasp of the last neocon or deep state functionary. Israel’s biggest trump card is its Ashkenazi elite running it as opposed to the dumber Arab populations surrounding the statelet.
This is a little silly. The main thing holding Isreal back is the massive international support Hamas gets.
Vitalism is a modernist phenomenon. Its appearance means that what has been tacit or taken for granted has become up for grabs. This is true of nationality, religion, race, economic creeds, etc. When people start connecting whiteness and will, for example, you know that European civilization is on its way out and something else is emerging.
Attack, attack, attack. World War I and its cult of the offensive remains the paradigmatic vitalist conflict. Generals weren't just refighting the Franco-Prussian War where Napoleon III repeatedly allowed Moltke to take the initiative. WWI was also when Henri Bergson's élan vital was at the height of its popularity. Vitalism here is an essential, spontaneous energy driving human evolution and development through continual growth, novelty, change, and creation, emphasizing the unique, indeterminate, and unpredictable. It existed alongside impressionism in other areas of culture.
The conflict was initially a disaster because it was led by aristocratic WASP-types that elevated amateurism in all things as a supreme virtue. Do a little bit of hunting, a little bit of tennis, a little bit of polo, and a few gatherings at country estates here and there. Doing anything too serious, even reading about military history and strategy, was passé, something vulgar and bourgeois, like the Costco family. The Russian autocracy tended to keep mediocrities in essential positions; in Germany, the Junker elite was disgusted by the urban masses and demanded obedience, doing nothing to suggest that public opinion mattered. You get the idea.
The genuinely creative people who shined during the conflict had liberal middle-class virtues. Consider John Monash, raised in the Australian outback by a family of Jewish shopkeepers. He earned degrees in engineering, liberal arts, and law, eventually became accomplished in music and linguistics, and founded a consulting firm for bridge and railway construction. The man was an organizational genius, a "big business" type of commander that would be common later, someone who could integrate all aspects of a complete battle plan, from combined arms to bringing hot meals to the front.
Another example is Sir Arthur Currie, a vulgar and profane man who grew up as a farm boy in British Columbia. His background was in insurance and real estate speculation. Astonishingly, especially given the context of the war, his troops never failed to capture an objective, were never driven out of a consolidated position, and never lost a gun. His recipe included detailed planning and preparation, reconnaissance, rehearsals, decentralized command, integration of engineering units, and new tactics like creeping barrages and counter-battery fire.
In short, industrial progress made amateurs out of the professionals and professionals out of the amateurs.
In philosophy, Bertrand Russell took down Bergson's ideas of infinity and continuity in a chapter of Our Knowledge of the External World, introducing mathematics and logic into philosophy to rigorously analyze these concepts, suggesting that philosophers should professionalize their craft, which opened the door to the systems of people like Carnap and Quine. Technology in the hands of administrative skill put an end to vitalism 1.0. Fascism -- the Nazis, the Italian futurists -- would reboot it on a technological basis, with mass media, the top-down shaping of public opinion, etc. But if Hiroshima and Auschwitz didn't kill the idea, Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 certainly put the kibosh on any respectable notion of a life force.
Richard spencer, an aristocratic type? The guy has been a plant and a honeypot organizer from the start. I don’t know why anyone gives him the time of day.
I mostly agree. I was imagining something like Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. I'll edit the post accordingly.
Yep, I tend to agree with the idea that "everyone has their own vitalism", and that the actual vitalists (as in, the ones who want to "Initiate Operation Africa" or rev up the "Biodiesel Refineries") are really nothing like the Substack variant of Vitalists. Almost like comparing a pygmy species on an isolated island to the more well-known species, like Pygmy Hippoes or Pygmy Elephants.
I also appreciate the points being made about "might makes right". The term "right" here really means "right to something", not moral correctness. There are times where the "right" guys lose the battle, whether or not you think there is an objective "right" guys. And yes, the moral "rightness" is more ascribed to "excellence" (arete) than "might". But the law of nature is might. I would say that the Vitalists do have a love for good specimens, which are sharp edges of Nature honed by its own internal winds. And I think BAP also explains in one of his Vidyas how "Vitalism" is intertwined with a sort of cosmological stoicism, where the world is recognized as an organic process. What the Stoics called the "World-Soul". The Platonists also believed in the World-Soul but believed in a greater principle of the Intellect, the source of ideas and whatnot. Stoics may or may not entirely believe in the "World-Soul" as the source of everything, which is not really a "thing" but a process or animation. Which is why sometimes you will see people call Stoics Materialists.
Very good points about Pindar... Brilliant composer! Despite, ehh, some things he said about the Gods. He clarifies that he altered those myths to replace even more unwholesome myths, so I do not think people should hate him for being a product of his times.
I've been thinking of a sort of "sportocracy" lately, where you get "ELO" for being good at some sort of game or sport. But the sport can't be one where you bash your head in like UFC, it should be a great sport. One that combines skill, strength, endurance, and cunning... And one that does not give you CTE to a significant extent. It would be like Pokemon where the Pokemon champion is the highest person in society and every town has its "gym leaders" and they are the local best. Or like Naruto or some shit. Idk I never watched that show. It is very difficult to strive for bestness these days because of the massification of everything. There are more people in New York City today than there were in the entire Greek world in the 5th century BC. Albeit, maybe people of lower quality, but it goes to show how hard it is to be "top". If we were in Yarvin world where everyone lived in one of ten thousand patchworks, maybe it would be easier. People would feel like they as individuals are more important.
>I've been thinking of a sort of "sportocracy" lately, where you get "ELO" for being good at some sort of game or sport. But the sport can't be one where you bash your head in like UFC, it should be a great sport. One that combines skill, strength, endurance, and cunning... And one that does not give you CTE to a significant extent. It would be like Pokemon where the Pokemon champion is the highest person in society and every town has its "gym leaders" and they are the local best. Or like Naruto or some shit.<
Holy SHIT wowza it would be just liek anime but in REAL LIEF!!!1!1
soyjak.jpg
Sorry but I had to.
“Anime girls are so beautiful… Meanwhile in the real world we have liberals”
—Joseph Goebbels