Oleg Bakhtiyarov: Supercivilization of the will

Oleg Bakhtiyarov

Translated from Ukr. by Olena Semenyaka
National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”

Volitional, voluntaristic view of the world hasn't disappeared with the victory of the liberals. The metaphysical volitional race constantly reproduces itself and its projects. Mechanical machine liberal supersociety of simplified and driven people will inevitably be opposed to another project in its final version – the project of supersociety, where the will is supposed to reign over life and life – over a machine and a mechanical matter.

1.

Speaking about the positive legacy of Solidarism, Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, and other colorful and exciting political phenomena of the 20th century, we must distinguish between their, so to speak, "organizational and technical" side and fundamental principles.

Organizational and technical heritage of Fascism, of course, retains its value so far, but it is no less important to understand the values in the name of which fought and shed their own and someone else's blood millions of people inspired by Fascist ideals.

In the great war of the 20th century – the clash of the Liberal, the Communist and the Fascist projects – ultimately won the liberal world. Winners ordered us unconditionally accept liberal values, allowed critically but sympathetically consider the ideology, deeds and biographies of communists. However, on a sober non-judgmental attitude to the ideology and practice of Fascism is imposed strict and, in some cases, legislative ban.

Behind this irrational rejection of Fascism is hidden more than vindictiveness of winners. Obviously, the Fascist, more precisely, the National Socialist project, unlike the Communist, was absolutely incompatible with the Liberal one. Indeed, for Communism was seen as the result of capitalism's development. Yet National Socialism meant a total denial of the entire metaphysical foundation of a modern society. That's why the National Socialist civilization is considered as the essentially different, magical one. It is easy to see why for the liberal National Socialism is magical: not understanding what the will is, he views the volitional action as incomprehensible and hence dangerous for him magic.

In the world and its parts, including society and man, it is possible to single out machine, organismic and volitional components. People and teachings differ depending on what they consider the basis, the foundation of being and what they identify themselves and the Universe with: the machine, the flow of life or the will (this is a very similar approach to that of A. Dugin; he distinguishes between three basic types of worldview: "polar-paradisiacal," "a magic matter" and "creationist"; see. A. Dugin. "Metaphysical Roots of Political Ideologies." Милый Ангел, № 1, 1995). The universe, an organism and man as the will, as life and as a machine are three incompatible in one mind pictures of the World. Even if some intellectual understands another, alien point of view, a fundamental reality is all the same recognized as either the will, or life, or a ruled by abstract mechanical laws matter. Irreducibility of these diversities to each other is so large that we may talk about three different metaphysical races, three types of elite.

History of culture is the history of collision of these three metaphysical races. The conflict of Newton and Goethe, Marx and Spengler is the conflict of the mechanical and the organismic. The collision of Spengler and Hitler is the contradiction of the organismic and the volitional approaches. In the 20th century clashed three projects of the future supersociety: the mechanical, machine project of Liberalism, "a magical matter" of Communism, which inevitably manifested in the ideological doctrines of late Communism that are genetically related to the Russian cosmism, and the voluntaristic National Socialist project.

Anyone who sympathizes with the latter project feels within a volitional element, which can not be reduced neither to the thought of the modern machinelike world, nor to the intuition of cosmism. If we are interested in discussing politically incorrect, prohibited topic of the positive legacy of Fascism, this means our clear or unconscious choice in favor of the voluntaristic picture of the world and the need for social and cultural arrangements that would reflect this picture.

2.

The victory of Liberalism is more than just the victory of one of ideologies. The struggle of three projects in the recent past was the struggle for mastery of the process of converting the traditional civilization to another, built over civilization and cultural processes form of human communities. He who wins will set the direction of its development, its meaning and its model of man.

Many authors admitted that at present constitutes a new type of human communities, as distinct from the classical civilizations, as a civilization differs from pre-civilization and tribal forms. Different authors call this phenomenon differently: postcivilization, supercivilization, supersociety, etc. There are two common prefixes: "post" and "super." "Post" – because it succeeds civilization; it is its transformation, as radical as civilization is radical transformation of tribal communities. "Super" – because over the usual course of history, over natural processes of social development is built a new technological system of managing processes that used to be natural. A key feature of this new society is forming the world of technologies that cancels a lot of laws of emergence, development and decline of civilizations. Previously, technogenesis was derived from the ethnogenesis and culturality, whereas now it became an independent phenomenon that determines the social and cultural forms.

Autonomous technogenesis is a phenomenon of the post-war era. Technologies have been only projections of cultural phenomena before. Cultures and civilizations appeared, developed and declined; along with them, therefore, arose, evolved and faded technologies. Currently, technologies eliminate many regularities of natural processes. European nations should have given way to more passionate nations, an American ethnic chimera should have collapsed under the influence of centrifugal forces, etc., but a powerful technological shell keeps them from such a sad end.

Autonomous technogenesis means that deep truths and attitudes henceforth are not expressed in languages of sacred doctrines or ideologies, but in languages of technologies. Each of the underlying metaphysical approaches corresponds with its type of technology, its technological world.

Modern technologies, from industrial and informational to biotechnologies, are technologies of "composition and decomposition," technologies, generated entirely by a machine, a discrete layers of thought described by discrete language and implemented in the world of discrete mechanisms, consisting of the same discrete and interchangeable parts. Those layers of thought and, more broadly, the entire array of mental functions that bear the principles of integrity and continuality are practically not included in the cycle of creating modern technologies. This machine technological world also requires a certain type of person, man, safe for machinelike social structures, simplified and constricted, cut off from infinite realities and male heroic values, devoid of personal stamina, and, most importantly, the will and subjectness.

3.

However, it seems that what we experience now – sharp narrowing of the field of cultural effect, superiority of hedonistic aspirations and pragmatism over higher manifestations of spirit, simplification and constriction of human beings, the rapid disappearance of subjectness even in the elite strata – all this is not the end yet. Volitional, voluntaristic view of the world hasn't disappeared with the victory of the liberals. The metaphysical volitional race constantly reproduces itself and its projects. Mechanical machine liberal supersociety of simplified and driven people will inevitably be opposed to another project in its final version – the project of supersociety, where the will is supposed to reign over life and life – over a machine and a mechanical matter. This project will also include other technological worlds, based on a completely another view of reality.

If previously a formula of the full project was "Ideology + political practice," now to this formula is added a third member – "Ideology + political practice + technology." Ideological objectives (a new race + metaculture + supercivilization of the will) must be supplemented with the new technological world, alternative to the existing one. Encouraging signs of emergence of the alternative world are already present, and, most interesting, mainly those new sprouts break through in Ukraine, for the concepts of universal natural cycle, totallogy, psychoneutics were born namely in Kyiv.

These concepts become the basis for projects of creating:

– The world of organismic technologies, which enables to rule the living namely as the living, not "compose and decompose," but to "grow," to initiate the natural processes of growth and development and to overcome limitations inherent in the machine side of our nature;

– The world of voluntaristic technologies, something similar to the magical act of fulfilling a volitional intent.

Language of these other alternative technological worlds can express those truths that cannot be articulated in language of mechanical modernity. If this project succeeds, it will mean the beginning of moving away from the "trunk line of progress," moving to the full reality and full life of human beings.

4.

Someone will inevitably start this process, some nation, some country. It is better if we will. But for this we need to soberly make an inventory of the entire heritage of the 20th century. The historic crossing is not passed yet. We are still in a state of transition, bifurcation, morphing. It is not a fact at all that we have adopted liberal, "modern" values. Ukraine faces a choice – either become a periphery of the Western civilization with all the disastrous consequences for the individual and the nation, supercivilization, rules of life and development of which are not produced by us. Or create its own supercivilization, of another direction, with another human project, to give birth to the new race – not the race of simplified bioapparatus, but the race that really can be called superhuman. The task, of course, is from the category of "super." But in times of grand historical disasters only "super" makes sense, only "super" survives and goes on. And within that historical crossroads, that historical "present," which lasts for nearly a century, we should scrutinize the basic principles of our ideological predecessors.

Liberal experience is unacceptable for us. The Communist project unfolded in front of our eyes and collapsed, barely entering the organismic trajectory. He managed to give life to a number of highly creative people and a plenty of organismic doctrines. But it only confirmed Nietzsche's prophecy that life in the Socialist society undermines its own foundations. The Fascist, National Socialist project that appeals to the will as the primary basis of human existence remains to be truly intriguing. National Socialism is interesting due to its form of organization and restoring the role of voluntaristic elite in public life, appeal to the values of heroism and creativity, striving for the establishment of subjectness in human mind and thirst for greatness in social consciousness. It is interesting, because the romance of life "super" for the first time has found the technology of its realization.

Since then, a whole era has passed. But the intersection left behind by mankind still attracts. Back then, in the 20th-40th years the history could have gone the other way. Hence a greedy interest in the intellectual circles to unrealized potential of the National Socialist project. We want to scrutinize the crossing passed 60 years ago and start building our alternative world. This does not mean that we want to become Germans or Italians. We defeated not the ideology, but nations that were its bearers. And their project we reckon among our military trophies.

New ideology, of course, won't be neither Fascist, nor Communist, nor "-ist" at all. In the final confrontation, the star of which is only begins to flare up, will collide life and its mechanical appearance, the will of subject and controllability of things. We still can choose our place in this future great war.

© 2012


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