Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

JOSH AND CURT ON ARYIANISM’S USE OF DOMINANCE AND HEROISM

(important concept) (western civilization)

—“You will not find some emotional appeal for heroism therein. Heroism is not mere emotionalism, but a state of deep detachment, the sovereign psychology.”— Josh.

Thats dominance, not heroism. That’s Excellence as an expression of dominance.

Heroism cannot exist without a commons to benefit from the hero.

It may be true that heroism is merely the reward for dominance on behalf of the tribe.

It may be true that heroic status is merely compensation for breaking the ingroup moral bias against what would otherwise be interpreted as ‘dangerous’ displays of dominance. In other words, it may be true that heroism is a means of insuring the dominant that they will be free of retribution by ingroup members, by reversing the prohibition on dominance.

It may be excuse making by the population as a means of defense against dangerous displays of dominance.

You might be correct in that its dominance not heroism that inspires, and heroic status is merely a reward.

You might be correct in that heroism provides training for the young in the appropriate uses of dominance. (This is my interpretation).

In this sense your statement is correct: That we seek to be free of the evolutionary norm that inhibits our desire for alpha dominance, and that heroism is a normative institution that justifies the mature, and incentivizes the young, and limits abuses to those that benefit the commons (ingroup members).

But you cannot conflate heroism, with dominance as you have done above.

So since dominance exists in all cultures, but only the west has constructed a (universal) heroic society, where the incentive to apply dominance is constantly rewarded, and heroism is a pedagogical means of channeling it to good uses, and punishing it for bad uses, then I think we can come to agreement.

I guess in this sense, the heroic tradition is our central ‘teaching’. “Your dominance is an asset to the tribe so long as it is channeled for the tribe’s benefit. And if we channel all our men’s dominance rather than suppress it, then we are concentrating a scarce and valuable resource into a constant evolutionary cycle.

This plays into the argument that we develop faster than the rest because we do not seek to limit our people by limiting what they can do, only limiting what they cannot do. Most tribes do the opposite: they create rules of repetitive conduct (for stupid creatures) that focus effort in static directions, rather than focusing efforts of men in innovative and creative directions.

So through heroism (training for competition) and through dominance, and reward for ‘good cunning’ and punishment for ‘bad cunning’, and through the enfranchisement of all who will fight, we create a constant stream of predators at-the-ready in constant competition with one another, producing constant innovations in war, politics, industry, family, craft, and arts.

And this is why heroism (encouraging the mastery of dominance) is so effective a strategy: it creates a market (calculator) for excellence in dominance.

It just took me overnight to think it through. I knew you were not so much wrong as not using the right language because conflation is natural to you, but if we agree that heroism is value/virtue that we train so that we do not need to suppress dominance, but instead, FOCUS dominance, so that we are a more competitive ‘tribe’ then I think we can agree that almost all men of ability seek to excercise their dominance just as much as a beautiful woman seeks to exercise hers so to speak.

If you had not written this post I would not have been able to put this question into words, so yet again, I have to thank you for your insights and criticism, which over the past few years has been extremely helpful and influential.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine