The Superior Man of Culture and His Existential Enemy: The Natural Man

The superior man of culture is the highest individual unit present in a civilization. The degree of superiority of a civilization is determined by the place such a man occupies in society. In a superior civilization, the man of culture is the Brahmin - he stands at the top of the cultural hierarchy, guiding society as if in a priestly role.

When a dangerous degree of social anomie (to use Durkhiem's term) reaches a civilization, the man of culture is displaced from his priestly and privileged role, and in his place ascends his existential enemy: the natural man. This human type is the man completely exiled from the symbolic and cultural dimension that makes us fully human, a being outside the higher workings of culture, the man devoid of all value, the human creature who retains his "humanity" only in name - the reduction of man to an animalistic condition.

While the man of culture directs his spirit toward the most sublime metaphysical regions of the cosmos, the Naturmensch dissolved his spirit in the most brutal existential mire, leading him to annihilate his human condition. This is why the natural man contaminates the entire social body like a virus or a parasite. Just as a virus attaches itself to the cellular machinery to reproduce its form of life, man, oriented only to his lowest vital impulses, attaches himself to culture and uses it to reproduce his degraded existential condition. Where a culture once worshipped beauty, it will now worship ugliness; where it once worshipped order, it will now worship anarchy; where it once worshipped High Culture, it will now worship the crudest naturalistic dimension.

Of course, it is not possible to completely biologically eliminate parasites and viruses. Such beings will always threaten a biological organism as well as a cultural organism. But it is possible to develop and cultivate a cultural immune system and an army of antibodies against the viruses and parasites of superior culture. And the man of culture is such an antibody. The Kulturmensch is the immune system of a culture. Therefore, when he is displaced from his social position of dominance and influence, the social body falls prey to pathological organisms. Thus, the most important political and intellectual work is the cultivation, and formation of men and women of culture. Such individuals are the only source of defense against the pathological organisms that threaten a culture.

Thus, the culture of a superior people is the expression of the existential and spiritual potency of its men of culture. The problem is that the existential, psychological, and spiritual condition of a man of culture requires a very specific habitat to thrive and prosper. Culture, in its fullest sense, is the cultivation of the human dimension with a view to intellectual and moral excellence. If a political order does not have the pursuit of such goods as its clear purpose, then a man of culture born into such a community will have a virtually minimal chance of prospering. Such is the case with a man of culture born into a democratic political order. And here we must bear in mind that it is not possible to produce men of culture, but only to develop such a character; that is, a man of culture is born. A specific human type cannot be created out of nothing, but is the result of higher-order cosmic events, of profound metaphysical laws, and of a providential destiny that originates in the uranic spheres of cosmic reality. We can then see why the superior man of culture is an existential threat to a democratic political order.

Democracy is the triumph of the natural man, of the animalistic man oriented toward the lower and degraded dimension of his uncontrolled and formless instincts. Democracy is the cult of the dead weight of quantity. Voting as the expression of truth is the triumph of mathematical reasoning as the criterion of supreme truth. It is no coincidence that the return of democracy in modernity occurred alongside the emergence of experimental sciences, which also operate through eminently quantitative methods of analysis and experimentation. But dead quantity can only be a value for slaves and serfs, not for superior men who know that truth is a woman to be subdued by the force and dominion of a high and superior character. In a democracy, the criterion of quantity is extended to all domains of life. When the dimension of culture is colonized by the idea that the value of something is determined by the greatest number, the result is the reduction of culture to a state of sludge and vulgarity.

This truth can be attested today by anyone with a functioning brain who has not been contaminated by modern democratic myths. Musical styles like rap, vulgar pop music, and other garbage peddled by the Cultural Industry as an expression of the "emancipation" of minorities are the direct result of the triumph of the natural man, of the numerical man who is the ideal citizen of a democratic political order. And since the criterion of truth and value of something is determined by the number of people who agree with it, such precarious musical styles are shielded from any sophisticated and elaborate aesthetic critique, as such critique is seen as an expression of an illegitimate and aristocratic elitism of "fascists." It is no coincidence that current pop music only worships the crudest materialistic dimension - sex and violence; and since we have known since Plato that ethics and aesthetics are linked, the result is that the aesthetic degradation in which we live - cities polluted with graffiti and constant noise, garbage and urban chaos, widespread crime, inelegance, and a complete lack of education and civility - is the direct cause of the collapse of an ethical worldview based on the pursuit of human cultural excellence.

This is why the only way out for the superior man of culture is the restoration of an aristocratic political order based on the monarchical principle and hierarchy. Such a political order is the only one capable of guiding a community toward the higher tasks of culture, transforming the race into an incubator of geniuses of spirit and culture. Let us look at human history: we will see that all the superior fruits of culture were the works of aristocratic, warrior, and hierarchical peoples. The Greeks, the Romans, medieval Europe, the city-states of the Renaissance, France in the classical period, feudal Japan. Such places are the measure of what we understand as culture because such historical moments represented the most radical negation of the quantitative principle, and even when organized in democratic forms like Periclean Athens, what mattered to such political orders was the qualitative dimension involved in the production of superior men.

What does this tell us about the task that weighs on the shoulders of men of culture who inhabit the decadent liberal democracies of the contemporary West? There can be only one task: the man of culture must become the warrior and soldier of culture, not merely its guardian. In an aristocratic political order, the man of culture is the guardian, priest, and creator of culture. This is because such a political order is an expression of the verticality of the spirit. In a democratic political order, where superior culture is seen as a threat to the brute dominion of the numerical man, the man of culture must be the soldier and warrior of culture, the purest expression of an outlaw imbued with the sacred task of preserving the superior heritage of the geniuses of his race. We need gangs of Western men forged in the flames of the spirit, passionate about the poetry, philosophy, and art of their culture, but who at the same time have forged their bodies for the coming battle: the final struggle that will transform the Earth either into a vast slum or into the reborn Empire of the Western Spirit. Let the reborn soldiers of culture and future warriors of jihad arise.