And Here's How It'll Go

Manuals for the Future

A great deal of my time in politics, writing, and trying to get a grasp on the world around me has been dedicated to reading a lot of older and not-so-mainstream texts. It’s become a niche market of sorts on the online right, trying to resurrect books that have covered parts of history not accepted by the mainstream, or written from or on behalf of the “unfashionable side” of certain conflicts. Whole accounts and businesses exist on this side, whether it was Mystery Grove trying to tell you to read (often with humorous threats of cartoon violence) to read the works of General Wrangel or Peter Kemp, to Antelope Hill Publishing, Passage Press, and countless others specializing in translating and getting more esoteric texts out to a willing audience.

In this time there’s been a great deal of focus on the works of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, Francis Parker Yockey, and even more mainstream writers on the subject of history and planning, such as that of Isaac Asimov, Walter Miller, and Anthony Burgess. The fascination with history, as the oft-repeated line about those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it gives us an indication we are always looking for wise men, patriarchs, sages, oracles, holy fathers, to give us a clue as to where we are going and how to best weather the storm of the age. It’s safe to say that you can get more out of these texts than you will what is usually taught in your public schools, such as Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World.

Even the grimdark fantasies of Warhammer 40k has been popularized by a tweet from Mr. Bennett’s Phylactery, who had said something along the lines of “We’re all living in 40k we’re just picking which faction we’re part of.” Our pop culture has been absorbed (really it always has been) into the cultural battles of today, as classic science fiction franchises now desperately push for the dumpster fire of their progressive themed movies and tv shows to be put out with extinguishers only to be left with heaps of ashen garbage that are barely recognizable to the fans who once loved their original works. Every side of political assumption groups and tribal formations draw parallels to films, movies, and tv shows as models, or at the very least reflections of how the world actually works. Despite its annoying tendencies of being overplayed, as I’m sure many can remember people citing Harry Potter for their political understanding of the world before JK Rowling went TERF, “REaD aNoThER BoOK” is an older but well aged meme about our general cultural and forgive me for saying it, media literacy.

There are plenty of books about historical events, or future historical events, that run parallel with our own society, wherein our ideologies play out in a way that give us the chance to interrogate or at the very least explore what they might look like in practice. Some of these books are overly preachy, thinly veiled political screeds like that of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Heinlein and Asimov, or even the Futurians in the late thirties (with the Marxist and Stalinist tendencies included) had their worldbuilding above and beyond whilst giving their politics room to be lived in. For the 21st century, the writings of Theodore Judson have inhabited a space of predictions, parallels, and politics for the right. Judson, whose works included Fitzpatrick’s War and The Martian General’s Daughter, among his most well known. Individuals like Charles Haywood, X User Enoch Powell (MogTheUrbanite), and myself have tried to give his works the attention they thoroughly deserve in part because of its excellent writing but also that his works feel like they speak to the current moment with all our reactionary tendencies included.

Would I be able to call this 73 year old baby boomer a reactionary? I’m not too sure, I don’t know the man from Adam, although reading his works I think he has more grounded understanding of the world than most of his generation, and his writing illustrates a historical appreciation for how empires rise and fall. The Martian General’s Daughter is a futuristic retelling of the Year of the Five Emperors, and available in e-book form as getting your hands on a physical copy is nigh impossible. I will highly recommend Charles Haywood’s review of the book that’s available on his website and Youtube channel, his review style is entertaining as more often than not do his reviews bleed into political wish lists and calls for justice that many would call fedpost-y.

As much as I enjoy the two books by Judson, I was recently informed that for a very short time in 2007 he had his own blog. I’m not aware if he still writes or had written anything since then, but just like many people discovering Curtis Yarvin’s Unqualified Reservations or finding a book that “gets it”, so too did I go giddy with excitement to find out a niche author that I enjoy had written more than I initially thought. To go back to 2007, when I was 12 years old and living overseas with a radically different and limited understanding of the world, to see how he saw it as a middle aged man born in a different epoch of American greatness talking about “kids these days” to his own works, is a strange digital treasure that really tickles a certain type of an overly online person.

While Judson’s works give insightful, sometimes an uneasy prophetic (or perhaps a certain type of reader wants him to be prophetic, more on that later) feeling about the various technological factions that have seeped into the greater public noosphere of global online consciousness, the country falling apart to corruption, instability due to immigration, etc…you’re left wondering when are the Yukons ever going to emerge and right the ship, and just who might be the shadowy Timermen of his novel. Eighteen years ago he wrote about this, addressing the very question if someone like the Yukons, or if anyone like them could rule America one day. On that question, he writes the following:

The late Abbie Hoffman said many foolish things in his lifetime, but one thing he said that was true was: "To be a revolutionary in America is like being a wallflower at an orgy." The truth is, as much as some Americans claim to dislike their homeland and the modern world in general, they in fact love the personal freedom, the wealth, the social and physical mobility, and even the constant entertainments one enjoys here….So, I would have to say, no, the Yukons are not currently a possibility. While I do think we will see a rise in secrect societies in our near future (during chaotic times, people find comfort in such groups; witness the mystery cults of the Hellanistic and late Roman eras, and the secret societies of the Italian Renaissance), but for one of these societies to come to power, the government would have to become much weaker than it presently is and the people much poorer. Such a group would also have to become a nation unto itself and able to tend for itself in every way. My imaginary Yukons do that, but it takes them three generations to become that strong, and they are the benefactors of a number of technological discoveries a real group would probably never have.

Now this was written in 2007, before the age of Trump, Covid, or any major debates about the strengthens and weaknesses of a regime, of “Turbo America” and the like. Judson’s observations hold true to me, we are not anywhere close to living in conditions that would engender feudal, semi-autonomous groups and territories or uprisings, at least not yet. For as much as we live in blatant anarcho-tyranny, low trust societies and with our sovereignty/identity up for debate, the goods are still pouring in, and the supply chain crisis hasn’t gotten to a point where we’re subsistence farming. There certainly are mystery cults going around, from spirit cooking occultists to others certainly more shady and unknown.

It’s certainly hard to shake the desire for a political outcome, a wish upon a star, wherein the great man of history will come victoriously through the land, and the papers will change their tunes calling him a villain to emperor as Napoleon once was as he marched on Paris returning from his exile. While I certainly take Psalmist’s words to heart trust not in princes in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation, the temptation for the great man to emerge as an earthly savior is always present. Don’t get me wrong, wanting a Nostradamus figure to tell you how things will go will be always be there, it is innate to the human condition to seek prophets. Throughout the history of the Christian faith and The Church has eschatology been so central to some that whole sects have been borne out of failed predictions and far off exegesis of the end times.

Even as we enter an age of apostasy and madness, an era that Saint Anthony once spoke of some 1700 years ago, we turn to authors, fictions, theorists and political scientists to help navigate the madness that they study, or were survivors of a madness similar to one we inhabit now. It’s a matter of faith, a trust in our reason and ability to deduce, that our instincts aren’t wrong, and that we have more control at least through understanding our current age that would make us feel less adrift in the sea of life. If knowing really is half the battle then we ought to know as much as we can. Our technology allows us to get short summaries, whole YouTube personalities live off making “useful” graphs, our facsimile of omnipotence still leaves us grappling with the questions of our time, leaving a few of us to pick a certain thinker or writer to be “our guy” that we go to as a hermeneutical tool to examine the present age. Many fellow travelers in these spaces I inhabit are such characters, “I’m an Ellul guy” or “Spengler Guy” or “McLuhan Disciple” or even trying to bring lesser known names like Karl Ludwig von Haller into the English speaking political ecosystem. This isn’t to be disrespectful to their study or their works, after all I am only one man who works two jobs, their functions as intermediaries certainly help in my own intellectual pursuits and why I try to avoid making predictions myself.

As Judson writes;

It would be easy to make fun of those who predict the future and are so foolish as to put their predictions in print for everyone to find years later. But it would be overkill. We all express ideas about the future, usually after the last of the wine is gone and we are feeling very wise. We, of course, are as wrong as the experts are, but most of us share our foolishness only with friends and family, and our loved ones are too kind to bring up the stupid things we have said. The question is--the two questions, in fact--why do we insist on doing it and why are we always so wrong about the future will be.

Sure we can talk about the future and what it may hold, but to ask me what do I think what the world will look like in a hundred years will have me quickly explaining that I don’t have the powers of clairvoyance. Yet if you ask me what got me so interested in things like geopolitics and the rest, I will tell you it was my freshman year of high school when I picked up a book called “The Next One Hundred Years” by Stratfor founder George Freidman. As a young teenager I thought the idea of use geography, history, economics, and demographics to predict the future felt like such a perfect science - the real world alchemy of the 21st century, but just like with real alchemy, you’re not going to get the gold you want but you’re certainly going to make some coin along the way.

We want to be the ones who can look back and say (even if our predictions are short term) AHA! I called it and you didn’t. It’s a fun measuring contest of online prescience and clout, but nevertheless an important avenue in which how your words and predictions validate your ever-evolving worldview. It helps keep eyes on you, it helps grow your subscriber box and the money that flows in, but even then these predictions, whilst made with facts or datapoints to give indicators for why you think the event or trend might go a certain way, they are still heavily reliant on faith…that ol’ gut feeling. I say this as someone who is pretty agreeable to most theses of cyclical history, it has somewhat of a winning track record, providentially so some might add.

Whether you’re a techno optimist, a neopagan luddite, or someone trying to climb the ladder of divine ascent, we turn to our data sets, a volkish way of being, Sacred Tradition to guide us looking back while walking forward into the ages to come. We’re determined to find answers somewhere, some allegory, some metaphor, some kind of Ariadne's thread to lead us out of the challenges of our time, or at least guide us as we face the minotaur of the future.

I think Judson’s blog post says it better than I ever could.

The two most famous novels written about the future in the past century--Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World--were not meant to be predictions and were in fact novels about tendencies that were current during the authors' lifetimes. Yet we want them to be blueprints for what is to come. As horrible as both Orwell's and Huxley's visions are, we actually take comfort in believing they are showing us the truth, for we find it better to "know" the future rather than to forge ahead into the darkness without a guide. Once humans placed their trust in something greater than themselves, but we have become as gods ourselves, and we want to see where we are going and are willing to believe that some among us can act as scouts. To think otherwise would be to doubt the modern world.

Theodore Judson’s novels, and works published and unpublished give us that hopeful guide that maybe we can take our fictions and use them as templates to propel us toward a future where we might suffer now, but our posterity may endure. That is something innate to the human condition, but we have enough records, reason, and knowledge to know that there is much that will pass, or will likely come to pass. Whatever may come, I’m brutally reminded, in a way that I think Judson knows, but perhaps is past the eyes and ears of many that put their trust in Someone other than themselves.

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”