The Art of Undercivilization

MANKIND was given a gift that no other earthly animal has ever been given: that of self-awareness. We are aware that we exist, aware that we will eventually not exist, and have the ability to philosophize about our mortal existences in the third person. That gift, I would argue, is what makes man, man. For thousands of years, man has used this gift to elevate our species above that of the groveling apes and into the spectacle of specialized societies. For thousands of years, man’s struggle has been the fight to temper their animalistic passion with human reason. In recent years, the beast inside many men has grown quiet.

Look at the average man walking down a city street. Slim, effeminate, likely on all sorts of social media, likely has all the “right opinions,” likely hasn’t had an independent thought in years. Soft, passionless, (unless bolstered by groupthink,) without a creative bone in their body. Of course, why wouldn’t they be this way? The universe hasn’t had the chance to sharpen their edges with hardships as it would have in the past. Most men today never had to face a quarrel in a back alley, much less a tiger in the wilderness. Most men today rely on medications supplied to them by corporations, medications designed to make sure that whoever takes them, keeps on taking them. Most men today have never had the chance to witness the extent of their own physicality, to reach inside them and find the fires in their soul when under extreme duress. Those experiences, which defined man’s existence for thousands of years, have gone by the wayside in modern society.

BUT, asks the reasonable man, isn’t less hardship good? What is civilization if not the ability to push back the forces of the universe and make life more comfortable for man? This is a great question. And were man machines, who could only be adjusted manually and did not have their personalities shape over time, more comfort would only bring about a positive effect. But man is not a machine. Man is not just a Head, but a Head and a Heart. The heart must be tempered with experience if it is ever to operate correctly, just like a muscle. This is not to say that all of man’s experiences should be stressful; like all things, balance must prevail. But if a heart is simply coddled for an entire existence, it will become soft, shallow and weak. There will be no depth, no deepness that its owner can reach into in times of artistic expression or further stress.

Think on that topic, for a second. Have you not noticed this? That good art does not come from a suburban-raised, ivy-leagued, white-collared academic? That good art comes out of individuals who have pushed their hearts and souls to the limit, stretched the limits of their passions, been placed under such extreme duress that they must either find the fires in their souls, or die? This is not to say that good art exists on a binary spectrum, where the more hardships you face=the better art you create. That would mean that African child soldiers would all be da Vinci incarnates. No, there is an element of ingrained talent when it comes to art, and all men possess some ability to express something. The point I am making here is that men who do not undergo stresses, and live in comfort, never explore the depths of their souls to the point that they uncover that artistic/passionate ability.

And this brings me back to my discussion of the inherent difficulties of the modern era. As civilization grows and develops, so does technology. Technology will inherently bring further developments in comfort. Of course, you cannot blame the developers; in a capitalist system, demand will always give rise to a supply, and there is always a demand amongst the rabble to be safer and more comfortable.

SO, as mankind presses back the forces of the untamed, chaotic universe, the untamed, chaotic universe has less opportunity to impress upon man exercises for the soul that have been so endemic in past generations. Technology has removed the necessity for a man to get up and risk his life hunting a mammoth to get food for his family… but has also removed the opportunity for man to explore the depths of his soul when given the chance.

WHERE does that leave us? Ancient Greeks, undoubtedly, never conceived that man would, quite literally, beat the Beast. Their philosophical paradigm rested on the struggle for Man to conquer the Beast, to wrestle free from our animalistic impulses and “tame” the Beast. They had scant technology that allowed them to live in complete avoidance of the universal threats that plagued men; their souls were, by default, explored to their depths. The men of Ancient Greece possessed HUNGRY fucking beasts, STRONG hearts, and DEEP souls. But they weren’t intrinsically any better or different than men today. They simply lived in a society where the edge-sharpening tools of the universe had access to them. There still existed a countryside outside every Greek city; men worked, hunted, fought, loved, all to the deepest extent of their souls. They had no screen, no computer, no phone, no virtual community to fall back on and masturbate their days away with. They were forced to live, and could never comprehend that the very Beast they wrestled with, day in and day out, would eventually need feeding.

WHAT Is the corporate/professional world today if not the exact opposite of the soul-enriching past? Life exists virtually, on screens, where the only man-to-man contact we have has a soft underbelly, ready to be cut by any “unpopular” opinion that defies the current social paradigm or any man who makes an “off-color” joke. Man must wake himself, eat the corporation-supplied food from his corporation-supplied refrigerator while living in his corporate-tenant-owned apartment building, take a shower from the corporate-supplied water source, put on his corporate-supplied clothing that he thinks will make him stand out from the pack (but doesn’t realize that everyone fucking else is doing the same thing so everyone winds up looking exactly the same,) walk through the grey, drab, lifeless, artless, corporate-run streets, go to his corporate job where he knows he is walking on eggshells and could never say or even have an opinion that defies the social mob without consequence, and goes home afterward to watch corporate-sponsored media entertainment on his corporate-designed entertainment delivery box of his choosing. And ALL of this is in the name of what – to attain enough government currency so that he can purchase more corporate-designed material goods?

IT IS NO WONDER that men today are soulless and passionless. Those in charge – the government and large corporations – do not want individuals. They do not want men who have clear, independent thoughts and are going to become self-sufficient and soulful men. They don’t want those kinds of men, so they make sure they are few and far between. They provide the latest comfort-bringing tech, provide food, medication, currency, everything that a domesticated cat would need to survive so each and every man can find their place as a well-oiled, medicated, low-creativity, cog in the economic machine.

WHICH BRINGS US to the crux of this entire argument. WE are living in a time where our perpetual struggle exists as the mirrored image of that of the Greek’s. We must not temper our Beast with our Manly virtues; we must temper our Manly virtues with the Beast itself. We need to find ways to dig deep and give ourselves to the universe every now and again, push ourselves, find the fire, the passion, the love, the SOUL that exists inside of us and use it to temper our machine-like desire for comfort. For many of us, this means that we will have to manually “throw ourselves to the wolves” so to speak, and consciously give ourselves up to the stressful situations that our ancestors would have loved to have been free from. How fucked up is that?

HOWEVER, the question then becomes thus: does manually giving yourself up to the forces of the universe in the name of soul exploration detriment the desired outcome? And, if you already know the desired outcome, can you ever manually give yourself up to such a degree that you are truly pushed into the unknown depths of your passion? Maybe not. Maybe one must bring themselves to the very edge, to a risky precipice, and simply wait for the universe to naturally push them over the edge and give them the experiences and adventures they so desperately need.

DOES THAT MEAN that we must divorce ourselves from the professional/legal/corporate world entirely?