“What I am about to say does not concern the ordinary man of our day. On the contrary, I have in mind the man who finds himself involved in today’s world, even at its most problematic and paroxysmal points; yet he does not belong
inwardly to such a world, nor will he give in to it. He feels himself, in
essence, as belonging to a different race from that of the overwhelming
majority of his contemporaries. “
My first post will offer my admittedly narrow perspective on Julius Evola’s Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for Aristocrats of the Soul. The book is a detailed account from the Italian intellectual that makes and supports the underlying point that the fight for a traditional Western society has been lost to the rising climate of what he refers to as “modernity”: cosmopolitan, consumerist, corporatized renditions of our nations, values, and way of life. The best course of action for the traditionalist, who he addresses the book to, is to simply better oneself in physical strength, mental aptitude, and material wealth in the effort to become relevant in one’s community. This plan “rides the tiger” of the modern world, using anything at one’s disposal to climb the social ladder in the hope that enough people are in enough esteem among those they know to help take a guiding role back into the society of old when the modern system, which he deems unsustainable, collectively tires out and slows down long enough to strike.
I believe the work has become prophetic in nature since it was published in the early 1960s. Everything has become far easier than what used to be, for better or worse, and it’s expanded to a scope where it’s impossible to properly avoid. People can and do watch pornography for hours straight if they so choose. Others sustain themselves off of fast food delivered directly to their home. Too many interest groups eagerly participate in a race to determine who is most entitled to reparation from a beleaguered taxpaying class. To Evola’s traditionalist, the bastion of what made Western society great (Tradition with a capital T) has been stormed and ransacked, its stolen riches brought to the altar of rival deity Equality, spurring on the materialism, democracy, egalitarianism that has defined the social struggle of our people since the French Revolution. Many would love nothing more than to tear this establishment from the ground as if they were weeding the lawn of the West, but cannot, as Tradition is far too weak and Equality is yet still in its honeymoon phase of spending its social capital wrought from the destruction of what was.
Fortunately, not all would be lost. Evola moves on to the belief that history moves in roughly measurable cycles. Unfortunately, we currently reside in a “dark age” where vice is glorified and restraint is shunned. We have made so much “progress” by this standard: the “liberation” of women, homosexuals, and the proliferation of the internet all come to mind for me. The aristocrat of the soul must depart from this line of thought, and recognize this as an acidic burning through what remains of Tradition and cementing Equality’s grip on the West to create a flowing state without a proper structure; ultimately, the goal being to reduce all men to the same unquestioningly equal and material level and to kill the belief in a higher being.
This, in its purest form, will theoretically create a social vacuum that must be filled when its social capital is wholly spent. This time is when Evola would act, after spending the time beforehand not attempting to fight society head-on and win, but quietly building a powerful personal resume to use himself or to pass on to the next generation in eager preparation for the West to inevitably collapse on itself as one productive class increasingly struggles to pay for the countless others demanding the fruit of its labor.
