Where False Hope Ends, the Work Begins

A Clarification and Response to Librarian of Celaeno

I recently read

Librarian of Celaeno

’s response to my post, in itself a response to his prior post, about the difference between philosophical optimist versus philosophical pessimist dissidents, and I thought it merited a further response.

To engage in tit-for-tat posts, effectively what risks becoming a subthread wasteland, is not how I enjoy reading others’ posts - I’m not interested in interpersonal drama full of ego, nor do I care about pedantic arguments where nothing is resolved, the audience has lost the plot halfway through, and everyone comes across sounding like bickering children. Here, though, I thought it was worth responding for a couple reasons: (1) Librarian is keeping the conversation friendly enough and focused and (2) the issues we are discussing are important, not from a theoretical and pedantic perspective but from lived experience and the question of how best to orient one’s life.

First, and importantly, I agree with the core point Librarian makes in his response to me - that hopeless doomerism is psychologically unhealthy and those stuck in that victim mindset do a disservice to themselves and their lives. Perhaps some of the pessimists I linked to are mired in that perspective, and to the extent they are I don’t agree with them (some of the people I read clarify the limits and nuances of my own beliefs, even if I don’t always agree with theirs). However, Librarian’s core argument attacking hopelessness is not the point I made in my post, which revolves around the nature of philosophical pessimism (not just pessimism) and one’s response to it.

Philosophical pessimism is about the base nature of this reality. As I wrote in footnote 5, “Philosophical pessimism is that the base conditions of this world mean that one cannot be satisfied: humans are always either striving for an object or bored, nothing we do lasts, and existence is suffering. Furthermore, it is an endless cornucopia of violence - one must consume other living creatures in order to survive. Schopenhauer responded to this with ascetic withdrawal, while Nietzsche responded to it with will-to-power to try to spite underlying reality.” I don’t think that this description is really debatable, although it is, of course, debatable whether these horrors are outbalanced by the good in the world or that God is using this terrible metaphysical incentive structure for a higher purpose (both of which Librarian would, I think, agree with).

Furthermore, Librarian characterizes my political position as "that an evil cabal of bankers of centuries-old vintage so thoroughly dominates the globe that even to dream of working against them is wholly futile.” There is an element of truth to his statement (i.e. see here and here), but it is also a straw-man; we do ourselves a disservice by strawmanning instead of steelmanning alternative viewpoints, as it is only by confronting the strongest opposing views can we strengthen our own.

So first, yes, I believe that there is an international financial cabal in charge of world events; yes, they have achieved a tremendous victory over the masses of the world and yes, they face little to no actual resistance anymore. Fair enough. But I don’t believe that resistance is futile; if I did, what would the point of writing my blog be? Rather, I believe that cultural and political resistance is currently futile - instead, what is needed is a transformation of society on the level of metaphysics (culture and politics are downstream of metaphysical belief). There are some inklings in this direction, which I will discuss briefly, but basically fundamental cultural and political change is not currently possible because the world is not ready for the metaphysical shift required for it.

Furthermore, even if Librarian’s statement of my position was accurate, it still stops short - because if “an evil cabal of bankers of centuries-old vintage so thoroughly dominates the globe that even to dream of working against them is wholly futile”, it then begs the question: what then? How should one structure one’s life to live in this world, to act in a meaningful way and not succumb to the despair that Librarian so highlights? And that is the core of my project, not an endless loop focusing on the parasitical international central bank owners themselves.

Now, part of the divergence between us lies in our ontological and cosmological assumptions. In Liberian’s perspective (and please correct me if I’m wrong or strawmanning you) “good” is what brings one closer to God, who is ultimately infinite goodness, while “evil” is what takes one away from God, because “evil” is the absence of God. This is a standard Christian ontology, and any belief system contains an implicit ontology whether or not it is consciously acknowledged.¹ In his cosmology God created the world, even if Satan is in control of it, because he loves us and gave us free will to decide whether to get closer to him or not. I see this perspective and approach in his relationship to his personal issues he is currently undergoing; I appreciate the vulnerability he showed by sharing that with his readers, and I hope that they resolve positively in a way that benefits his life. I also want to acknowledge the commentators in his post such as JasonT, Uncouth Barbarian, Julie C, Bobby Lime, John Bunyan, Mrs. Erika Reily, Reluctant Convert who noted that the suffering → humility → grace → hope structure has positively impacted their own lives.

Could Librarian describe my ontology and belief structure, though? Based on his response, I don’t think he could - and I don’t really blame him for this, both because my perspective is still evolving and because it is so unusual. As I’ve written previously, though (here, here, here), regular readers would, I think, understand that my perspective is not just philosophically pessimistic but gnostic, recursive, and Jungian.

By gnostic I mean I think this world is controlled by a malevolent demiurgic creator who unifies the opposites within him - he is all good and all evil, combined, which Jung described in his Answer to Job and Liber Novus and which he called Abraxas. Jung has commented extensively and persuasively, I think, that in the Age of Pisces (30 AD-2,030 AD, give or take), under the Christian conception of God, the dark, uncomfortable parts of the psyche were suppressed into the unconscious, rejected in the hope of drawing nearer to Heaven. This manifested, though, in the projection of the unconscious onto the Other, resulting in endless and increasing war and strife. Jung argued that in the Age of Aquarius, which we are currently transitioning into, that there would be a new God image² toward one of wholeness, not goodness. Under this conception one would bring one’s dark, nightmarish unconscious into awareness - not to act on it, but to integrate it in the circumambulating journey toward wholeness, which is never complete. This doesn’t mean acting on those dark inclinations, but bringing them to consciousness and accepting them as parts of ourselves. Under this ontology “good” is what deepens our individuation process - to become who we are meant to be by balancing our intellect, intuition, emotions and senses in the hopes of approaching wholeness, away from Abraxas (acknowledging his presence and integrating it but individuating away from it) - and “bad” is what leads us away from that process. It is not just Christ that is crucified but all of us, individually, as we are torn between good and evil, God and Satan, materialism and spirituality, baser instincts and higher instincts - and this tension of the opposites manifests in each of us constantly, energies which we are meant to synthesize and resolve in our own unique ways.

Regarding the recursive component, it is important that each of us have a way of bouncing our views against bedrock reality. As I’ve written about, I make specific predictions about the future and then check those predictions; to the extent they are wrong I then update my views accordingly. I’ve been doing this process for about a decade now - and I would ask Librarian, do you ever check your prior predictions and update your worldview accordingly? If so, how often do you do this and can you offer some examples?

This leads me to the core point about my “doomerism”: if the world is fallen and cannot and will not be perfected, if God is all good and all evil together, if “good” is what leads us toward individuation, then putting out endless hope that someone, somewhere, some political or cultural or religious figure will save us results in spiritual paralysis. Why do anything spiritual, why go through the painful individuation process, if someone is just going to swoop in and save the day? In other words, adopting a political and cultural blackpill is a fundamentally necessary prerequisite toward doing individual spiritual work, which is hard, difficult, painful, and ever so scary. The work cannot start so long as one remains philosophically optimistic and waiting for salvation from others. And America, which has been on top for so many decades and centuries, is, as Jung put it, “extraverted as Hell.” There is an inverse correlation between material wealth and spiritual growth, and as the world barrels toward a neo-Malthusian Hellscape of endlessly diminished natural resources (reflected in ever-declining energy return on energy invested), as our quality of life continues to decline, I predict increased trends toward spirituality - but as this is an age that demands experience instead of faith, I predict that the ontology I laid out has much room for growth.

To wrap this up, hope can be a sedative. It is pain - deep, metaphysical pain - that breaks us open enough to begin the work. My project begins where worldly optimism ends. It is not about despair, but about confronting reality without illusion so that the inner process can begin in earnest, although it does have its own pitfalls and dangers.³ I don’t ask anyone to agree, only to consider that individuation begins where false hope dies.

True hope - the hope that the individuation process can lead to a deeper, more fulfilling, and integrated life - is not only helpful, but critically important. But this kind of hope is grounded in the results we see here and now, not projected into a deferred afterlife, and based on our willingness to sit with pain and contradiction and do the work, not on anyone else or God. The work must happen in this world, in this time, by us individually, in the midst of our unrelenting and crucifying contradictions.

Lastly, I had to brace myself psychically to read Librarian’s response, because historically exoteric mainstream Christianity, from which Librarian draws his strength and inspiration, has been a brutal prosecutor of esoteric gnosticism - from the original gnostics to the Marcionites to the Manicheans to the Cathars to the Bogomils, my views and those of Jung would have been denounced as heretics, with all of the punishment that involves, in the not so distant past. Jung had to hide his mysticism throughout his life under the guise of science, and his Liber Novus was only released in 2009. This relates to the concept of enantiodromia, where any energy over time changes into its’ opposite - Christianity, once suppressed by the Romans, became the oppressors of all of its detractors. And I can’t say that I blame them for it, because any ontology is going to ultimately change into something else and these competing beliefs will be seen as a threat - but Heraclitus was right that the only constant in this world is change itself (and death and taxes). As Emil Cioran wrote about the benefit of living in an age before the birth of a new God:

Is there a pleasure more subtly ambiguous than to watch the ruin of a myth? What dilapidation of hearts in order to beget it, what excesses of intolerance in order to make it respected, what terror for those who do not assent to it, and what expense of hopes for those who watch it . . . expire! Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when beliefs wither, when their articles and their precepts slacken, when their rules collapse. Every period’s ending is the mind’s paradise, for the mind regains its play and its whims only within an organism in utter dissolution. The man who has the misfortune to belong to a period of creation and fecundity suffers its limitations and its ruts; slave of a unilateral vision, he is enclosed within a limited horizon. The most fertile moments in history were at the same time the most airless; they prevailed like a fatality, a blessing for the naive mind, mortal to an amateur of intellectual space. Freedom has scope only among the disabused and sterile epigones, among the intellects of belated epochs, epochs whose style is coming apart and is no longer inspired except by a certain ironic indulgence.

To belong to a church uncertain of its god—after once imposing that god by fire and sword—should be the ideal of every detached mind. When a myth languishes and turns diaphanous, and the institution which sustains it turns clement and tolerant, problems acquire a pleasant elasticity. The weak point of a faith, the diminished degree of its vigor set up a tender void in men’s souls and render them receptive, though without permitting them to be blind, yet, to the superstitions which lie in wait for the future they darken already. The mind is soothed only by those agonies of history which precede the insanity of every dawn.

Thanks for reading.

Viktor Vasnetsov’s The Knight at the Crossroads (1878), warning that either path leads to death. The stone is inscribed with the following words: “If you go straight ahead, there will be no life; there is no way forward for he who travels past, walks past or flies past.”

1. In the Jewish ontology, for example, “good” is what furthers the power accumulation and domination of the Jewish people, crouched in “tikkun olam”, while “bad” is whatever detracts from that. Christians in this ontology are “good” if they help advance the Jewish project and “bad” if they denigrate from it. Alternatively, under Nazism “good” was what promoted the German and white race volk and “bad” was what denigrated it. Whatever a belief systems’ ideology is, it summons an egregore and individuals hooked into that egregore become hyper attune to any dissent, as discussed in this Note here.

2. Humans are not capable of comprehending God; rather, we have an image of God, the “God image”, that varies depending on a culture’s development and changes over time.

3. This gnostic and pessimistic orientation often does evade the full spectrum of joy, embodiment, and trust in being if it is not handled in a careful way, which involves a precarious balancing act between truth seeking, participation in life, and willingness to sit in pain and contradiction. Not because this orientation denies joy, embodiment and trust in being outright, but because its default posture is suspicion: it waits for the poison behind the beauty, the fall after the flight. This perspective fears consolation as a trap, treats joy as illusion-prone, tainted by entropy, consumption, or betrayal, overcorrects against naive optimism by refusing grace when it does appear, identifies too exclusively with depth, and may reject the surface as frivolous or dangerous. This is why I have been terrified for decades that I may grow old and feel haunted by the ghosts of long deceased relatives and friends in a world that has passed me by and forgotten me - perhaps because I did not participate enough in life itself. Thus, even this gnostic posture evades; it evades affirmation in order to remain true to lucidity, but it is still an evasion.

To call any framework complete is a misstep; every approach has its negatives associated with it. Even “seeing the illusion” can become its own veil. Epistemological humility is not the enemy of clarity; rather, it is the precondition for staying in touch with the deeper symbolic current without drowning in identification. However, what the gnostic and pessimistic orientation evades is not the same as what other postures do, where optimists and exoteric religious believers participate in life without understanding it.