Rough Beast Created
The Tribunals, CenturionAI, and indignant desert birds.
“Get up and walk.”
Those words of determination in the face of injustice have been with me for half a century of silent life. There is no other way to approach it.
“There is a Way, and it can be learned.”
Even when you are struck deaf forever.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
The world I grew up in is gone.
Once many years ago things made sense; men and women loved each other, and built nations, and legacy, and generation followed generation.
Today it is bugs and pods, drones, and AI, rotted States and the dysfunctional dystopia of overthrow and terrible, murderous sorrow of crash.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
Genocide once more wheels and roars through terrains, a dominance of the most cruel and dreadful sort. Demarches and remonstrances flutter and fly, while butchers in suits order hordes to kill and kill and kill.
All the lies now collapse at once, and the naked gaunt faces of confused and malevolent globocrats shimmer as they are cast from the dark horses they thought would bring them power.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Do you remember the rest of Yeat’s poem, The Second Coming?
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
All of us who live today in these sad and calamitous times are well aware of the undercurrent of feeling; the collective unconscious that warns all of us it’s here, it’s happening, and the deep horror at knowing it will be worse than anything before.
Is there a way around it, we wonder?
Not anymore. Perhaps twenty or thirty years ago there would have been a chance to reverse the direction of things. Today it’s far too late.
We’re going to be served the societal and civilizational consequence of our cultural decline. That’s not avoidable, and unfortunately it means that a lot of things aren’t going to survive that decline.
It’s going to be very dark, and as Swift put it in discussions over the weekend, the coming crash is going to be unusual for everyone.
“It’s going to be weird,” he said. “Some things will break and some will not; some people will make it and some will not, and it won’t be anything people expect or prepare for.”
There’s a good, strong observation in this:
Things have never been like this before - instantaneous information, infinite wealth, global mobility, and so on - all this interconnected and interdependent.
“Nothing like this has ever broken before.”
How fascinating an observation.
Let’s add some Nietzsche to it:
That which is falling should also be pushed!
Nothing like this has ever broken before, and there’s an open playing field for those who refuse to sit on the sidelines as humanity races madly through the gates of the Third World War just in time to collide with AI singularity.
Yes indeed, things are going to get weird.
You’ll want to ensure you are building the stability you want for proper posture and mindset towards the harder times that are coming.
That means real alliances, in the real world.
That means real fealty, between real men.
“Ivan, it seems so impossible to take it all on.”
Yes, I agree.
I went through the same horror and frustration at the blatantly obvious futility of trying to be one man alone against it all.
Yeah, that doesn’t work.
I figured that one out a long, long time ago.
And here we are today, are we not?
I stand shrouded with the Company.
Men across the Earth under the Standard who follow the Way of Heaven; Men who refuse subjugation, ignominy, and liquidation; Men who are determined with no parley and no quarter to seize the future by right of their prerogative!
Movement Factions in America, Europe, Australia.
Scientists, philosophers, war crimes prosecutors, businessmen, soldiers, farmers, engineers, athletes, all of them focused on building, fighting, and leading under common vision and values of joyful success extracted from hard realities.
Cadre members networked on every continent in the world.
And all this becomes more, you see, when you realize what we’re after.
We aren’t the Knights of Columbus or your local Kiwanis.
We are not a Party or a Church.
We are the Company.
There is an unusualness in our posture, our performance, our rapid movement and extreme patience. War requires strange movement; that is how it has always been.
But once it’s here, it does you no good to ignore it and pretend things are fine.
Get up and walk, even with strange movement.
It can feel strange to exorcise dead loyalties to rotted States.
It is terrifying to approach a new flag, much less a Standard such as ours.
You can die with your ship. That’s your prerogative.
There are no slaves under the Standard.
Think about what rough beast it is that slouches, and whether you can hear the indignant desert birds as the first quarter of the 21st Century draws to a close.
I saw them, long ago. It’s not difficult to see into men’s hearts and minds when you cannot hear them; you watch them. You follow the spoor of casualties and the glitter of victors, and you ignore the bragging for the blood and tracks.
That is how it works to search for truth in the dark.
I am Ivan Throne.
I tell you that these are the darkest of times, and I know you can feel it as well.
Therefore be of good heart and cheer!
We invite you to the Company, to the Movement and to join the ranks of those men and women who see the direction we take our work; the hierarchy, order, and beauty that we incessantly strive to bring to the advancement of civilization!
It’s extraordinarily rewarding. It’s often frustrating, and yes you’re tangling with the beast itself, as it shakes the sand from its limbs and turns those baleful eyes on you.
Good!
That’s what the whole Armor of God is for, you dolt.
Gear up, gird up, get up and walk.
We have fighting to do on Earth under Heaven, and as the Company we call Men to the Standard with roaring grand rise of pride in identity as Companists!
We offer the sure and certain knowledge that no parley and no quarter is our core and settled value, and with the ferocity of the vanguard in this Age of Militants we will not flag nor fail in achievement of our measures.
Today the Tribunals were launched.
They are just one more thing, one more existential overthrow-bomb from the Company for all the very right reasons.
Today Dr. Marat’s white paper Duty Of The State was also released. It’s an incredibly powerful journey through the basic right you have today and how it leads directly to the Company as a non-state actor charged with precisely that Duty of the State.
I’m going to send you right to that, in fact.
You must read Duty Of The State and consider it well.
Our scale and workload obstacles continue to mount. The roar of success underneath is even more profound, the terrain shifting to traction under us, and we know that the Company is on the way. It’s going to be a terrific journey in the wildest time in history, and we’d like you on board with us from the beginning.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
If you’re up for it.
You know how to find the Company assessments. If you haven’t done them yet, go do them. Then go back to watching the election tonight and the drama tomorrow, and think about what the dark ahead might require of you.
It doesn’t do pity, remember.
You’ll walk or you won’t.
Grand rising!