Occidental Affliction

Twentieth century German author and patriot Ernst Jünger once observed that we now “live in times in which war and peace are difficult to distinguish from one another.” (A lack of clarity extending to every aspect of modernity, not just matters of war and peace.) Jünger’s words ring true as ever, with Washington’s so-called war against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) a perfect case in point. Despite the Obama Administration’s boasts that its operations against the noxious terrorist entity are succeeding, it is proving difficult for the outside observer to identify whether such a campaign is even taking place. Aside from a few bombed Toyotas and scattered reports of civilian causalities, there has not been any discernible assault on ISIS.

A non-existent war, a contrived media stunt against a contrived enemy; or to borrow from Jean Baudrillard, the war “is not really taking place.” ISIS would not even exist were it not for US incitement and support for the so-called Syrian rebellion. From the Maghreb and Levant to the Caucasus and Central Asia, America is ever eager to sponsor the same radical Islamic groups that attacked it hardly a decade ago as a chaos agent in the Eurasian Great Game.

With ISIS never a substantive issue in itself, globalist oligarchs and their corporate media sycophants have already shifted mass attention to other supposed outrages. The introduction of Ebola into the United States has consumed the imagination of both the media and public, even though the number of victims can be counted on a single hand from an over 300-million strong population. Meanwhile America’s borders remain wide open and flights from West Africa arrive in the country daily. Elite-promoted paranoia over Ebola, like the ISIS scam, serves to keep the masses chasing after virtual phantoms, oblivious to their state of degeneration.

Indeed, the sickness at the heart of the modern West is not Ebola, or any other media-fueled excuse for hysteria. Rather, the very soul of our culture is stricken with a deadly affliction reaching to the very essence of Western man. In ruthless pursuit of utopian technocracy and fanatically applying desacralized humanism, discarding spiritual transcendence at “the ash heap of history,” we have progressed down a dark road with only one end; our disease will be fatal without treatment.

The Serbian Orthodox Christian Fr. Justin Popovic understood the disastrous nature of Western humanism, which in its boundless pride declares man the measure of all things. As he foresaw, the glorification of man would descend into vampirism and anthropophagy, with mere self-preservation the highest value:

As there is neither God nor immortality, a man is allowed anything for the sake of self-preservation. Sin is permitted, as are evil and crime.

Ideologies are weapons; the ruling elites understand the consequences of humanism and act accordingly. They exploit the spiritual bankruptcy of the society they dominate through a combination of shallow amusements appealing to man’s basest desires and endless fears of terrorists, third world diseases, and other scarecrows conjured as needed. “Liberated” from traditional morality, they are free to deceive and enslave for the sake of raw power.

Thanks to technocratic social engineering, Occidental man has become what the Hungarian traditionalist philosopher Thomas Molnar, in his study of the utopian impulse, identified as the “transparent man,”

…whose vacuousness no longer presents obstacles to the scrutinizers and manipulators. In a way, man lives outside himself, as if he were all in surfaces, with no gravitational center…. [he] does not notice he has become their plaything, in truth their soulless accomplice.

We sadly note that Western man is a full participant in his manipulation and exploitation by parasitic elites. Willingly he has embraced spiritless humanism, this spiritual disease, and fallen from the divine path God appointed him.

Instead of allowing ourselves to be carried along with every wind of mass panic and fear generated by the corporate media and cynical, warmongering politicians, we should contemplate the very real sickness that rots the soul of society and civilization – and actively repent. It is not ISIS or Ebola that spell our doom.