Right = reality
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I’ve said this before but I will say it again—and will say it many times more, no doubt. The right is just reality, the left is deviation from reality. It’s why the right is masculine—virtue means “man”, if you cut it down to its Latin roots; it means effectiveness (as in “virile”—the virtuous man is potent, effective). To be effective you have to be in touch with reality, the more effective you are the more in touch with reality—indeed, effectiveness and reality are gestalt.
It is just as with the human body. The effective human body is an integrated system—you are not aware of your toes; if you become aware of your toes, it may be because you have dropped a hammer on them. Your effectiveness is now impaired, you are somewhat removed from reality and absorbed in the pain—you cannot participate fully in reality.
You’re self-aware, there is a problem that you are unconscious of—and until you have found a way to bring it to consciousness you will be absorbed in this pain (in this case, “to bring to consciousness” means to put ice on the toe so it no longer throbs in a way that distracts you).
The right cannot be reduced to hierarchy, order, or tradition because, for example, East Germany was very hierarchical in many respects (as in the video of her armed forces above)—all the Communist parties were hierarchical, the woke today are hierarchical; just to have a hierarchy or a tradition is not sufficient—the left itself has a continuous tradition that stretches over centuries now.
In reality, when you go to a pub to socialise you don’t want everyone to be in a uniform and for there to be a strict hierarchy; effective socialising is, by definition, informal—it happens after work where rules are relaxed. It would be “leftist” to enforce a hierarchy and order on the way people socialise in a pub—because it would be a deviation from reality and effectiveness (it might be done because, perhaps, some people are naturally more popular than others, and uniforms and hierarchy, in this context, could be used to disrupt the natural order—reality).
Similarly, it would be ineffective to order strippers to a six-year-old’s birthday party—not because moral outrage, though it would cause that—but because it would mean nothing to a six-year-old (nor would the strippers really want to perform, even).
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So there is a situational and relational aspect to the right—and that’s why we can’t just say the right means “order, hierarchy, and tradition”. However, it is the case that man does not change—or changes very little—so, in practice, in fields like politics, what was effective in the past will be effective today and effective tomorrow. This is why conservatives are usually correct but not completely correct; they only have a reflex action to resist change—they are not necessarily effective and realistic in and of themselves (they just happen to want to preserve what has always been effective).
Hence, for example, the British Conservative Party is leftist. This is because it has promised for decades to reduce or to stop immigration—and yet immigration has always increased, even when they are in office; hence the Conservatives are ineffective, hence leftist (even though they say the right things). It is not sufficient just to “say the right things”. Indeed, the left, being narcissistic, is almost all about saying the right things—it is “the toe” that complains.
The left is associated narcissism (feminine) because it lives in a moralised storybook world where people are “good/evil”, “right/wrong”, “racist/anti-racist”—and so on. Actual realistic and effective action in any dimension reveals that the world is filled with ambiguities—that, for example, the “savagery” found in both Ukrainian and Russian forces in the current conflict is similar on both sides; but for a person caught in a narcissistic storybook delusion, as retailed by the media on both sides, it is “the others” who are savage and unscrupulous.
The masculine position is that what counts is whether or not it is effective. The atom bomb on Hiroshima was effective and hence it is barely questioned, even though it was no different to Auschwitz in outcome—Auschwitz was not effective (not at winning the war for Germany, anyway) and so is disdained. The Soviet Union was on the winning side in the war and so the gulags are not questioned in the way Germany’s concentration camps are—yet there is little difference between the two in practice.
People who live in narcissistic storybook world will believe that this is all connected with some “inherent moral superiority” on one side or the other (“the arc of history”)—in reality, Stalin and Hitler did a deal and Mussolini could have been neutral like Franco and Britain could have made peace with Hitler and America could have stayed out of the war. These were all possible. The actions, for example the Hitler-Stalin pact, don’t fit into a neat moralised story—that’s for women, children, and feminised men (believers).
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For people caught in narcissistic delusions (women, teenagers, university students, camp gay men) realism is perceived as “evil” because it just deals with the situation as it is and attempts to take effective action based on the situation—and this will almost inevitably contradict the established storyline (and make you feel unimportant). This is what the right means when it says it deals in “cold, hard facts” although, in fact, that is just how they express what might be better termed “situational awareness” in a rhetorical form.
The right is about awareness, consciousness, and observation—these are not reducible to reason and logic, which both easily become corrupted into narcissistic status games whereas an observation that disrupts a rational storyline can be very uncomfortable. Leftists “know not what they do” because they repress all the observations, instincts, and intuitions that contradict the “good storyline” they live in—they then project their repressed observations and emotions onto the right “fascists, nazis, Hitler”.
You might have heard people say things like, as a cliche, “when I lost my innocence” or “when I sold out”. This refers to the moment people surrender a storyline that they tell themselves about how the world is and should be and accept it as it is. This is connected to responsibility because often the narcissistic storyline includes the implicit communication “help me sort this out, help me do this (dad)”. In fact, if you want something done you’ll have to do it yourself and then that will mean you will become “bloodied” and “evil”—not an innocent.
“I’ll never compromise on my ideals, though!”. Well, then you will basically do nothing and never grow and eventually go dead because you never experience anything—because to experience anything means you’ve been “evil” but you self-conceptualise as “perfect”, not “one of those”. If you remain within a moralised storyline you will never really do anything, and so never really experience failure—which is essential for growth.
It’s a recipe for deadness and depression because you have cut yourself off from reality—which is dynamic, which is a cycle between joy and lull. The left accepts a false “happy” storyline as a substitute for the ups and downs in life—since to go up and down means you are imperfect, it also means you have to accept uncertainty and for some people that causes unbearable anxiety that must be pushed away with a storyline (psychological defence mechanisms).
This makes them depressed, because nothing real ever happens to them—even mundane real things never happen to them. They can’t just sit and enjoy a cappuccino because they like the foam on a cappuccino—it has to be “problematised” and fitted into some dramatic storyline about “post-capitalist production” or some clever account in academese.
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So, to reiterate, the right is just reality—just like if you wanted to play the clarinet professionally and were told that you have to practice every day for eight hours a day. The “left” would be to turn up as a “trans-clarinetist” and to claim that trans-clarinet is best learned, is at its optimum, when you only do it for three hours a week. The professional clarinetist might object that whatever this is—perhaps it’s something entirely novel in music—it is not what constitutes the professional clarinet standard.
The trans-clarinetist then throws a fit and claims this is blatant bigotry and oppression against non-standard forms in Western music—and that the state should intervene so that trans-clarinetists can appear in all major symphony orchestras and are recognised as full and legitimate “clarinetists” (everyone knows they’re not, but we have to pretend to be polite—just like we pretend Asians and blacks are “British”).
Hence the people who put forward progressive views tend to be very protected or inexperienced people—for example: teenagers, university students, white women (particularly professionals), journalists, university professors, actors, and Prince Harry. Perhaps, like Harry, they are also people who were subjected to considerable emotional turmoil as they grew up and this exacerbated a natural biological tendency to protect their sensitive selves with stories—so that, as adults, they live in a semi-fugue state.
Some of the ideas promoted by the left, such as easy divorce, are designed to inflict the emotional turmoil which they themselves experienced and gain emotional satisfaction from reliving on other people. The progressive left is very interested in “trauma” as a concept—that is because they are themselves traumatised. Prince Harry is traumatised but he has misidentified the source of his trauma and ironically, though he speaks in a psychotherapeutic register about his “trauma”, has no real insight into his actions and internal mental state.
There is just the reality of the situation—whether learning the clarinet or running a florist or running a state. There are actions that are effective and actions that are ineffective. Multiracial states are ineffective because they degenerate into low-trust tribal squabbles—ultimately, civil wars (at worst, contemporary South Africa—total collapse and dysfunction). That’s the reality. “That’s because you’re a bad person—you’re a racist.” Well, that’s moralism—that’s just how it is.
This moralised aspect can be related to conditions like alcoholism (itself connected to narcissism). This is a dysfunction because it is an ineffective response to shame. Hence: I feel shame —> I drink —> I feel elated —> I feel hungover —> I did “bad” things when drunk —> I feel shame —> I drink. It’s an ineffective response to shame, ineffective because it increases shame and remorse—and because it also destroys the alcoholic’s body.
Notably, Alcoholics Anonymous asks its participants to admit they are powerless in the face of their condition and to submit to a higher power (of their choice). The narcissistic perfectionist is a control freak—just like the left with its large bureaucracies. The control freakery comes about because he is insulated from reality by a storyline, hence he suffers from the delusion that he can control everything—yet it is obvious he cannot; and, in fact, being deluded he has no real idea as to why things actually happen and little facility to deal with them when they do.
If you deal with reality there is no need to feel shame—an action is either effective or ineffective, if it is ineffective try to work out why and then modify your actions to make it effective. Narcissists are beset by this question “Am I a good person?”—followed by “I haven’t done the right thing, I’m imperfect, I’m bad, I’m ashamed”. The correct position—why AA asks them to surrender control and accept a higher power—is that nobody knows if you are a “good person” or not and nobody knows if you did “the right thing” or not. These questions are not amenable to an answer by man—it is for God to judge.
What narcissists mean by “good person” is “Am I a socially acceptable person?”—really, “Have I fooled you into believing the self-image I have of myself as a ‘good’ person?”. Arguably, this is not really even to do with whether you are “good” or “bad”—unless you think these ideas have something to do with social acceptance at the most fundamental level.
While we can’t know if you’re “good” or “bad”, we can decide whether or not you are an effective person; hence, given whether we are “good” or not is not answerable here, by you or anyone else, you can forget about trying to convince other people and yourself that you are “good” and concentrate on what is effective instead.
Hence, obviously, to drink when you feel shame does nothing to diminish shame and, due to the way alcohol diminishes inhibitions, is very likely to put you in a situation where you do something to make yourself feel ashamed—hence it is ineffective.
To accept a higher power removes the concern over being judged by other people—hence it reduces the AA participant’s narcissism. This is why it works. This is why to be realistic requires you to accept some metaphysical aspect to life. The minimum iteration is a Jungian formulation that couches what is really a metaphysical proposition in scientific terms—i.e. to put on the avuncular Swiss accent, “Ze reality of ze zyche cannot be denied, even by modern zcience.” In other words, there is a higher order of reality, the archetypes, that exists beyond and above you.
It’s also connected to the idea that there is an “inner observer” that is “contentless” (not your social reputation, your persona) and that if you identify with that—what the Hindus would call “Brahma”—you will find that you are not perturbed by these questions of social respectability and being judged by others; it doesn’t judge, it just makes observations about reality—which is how you should be, an impartial observer.
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The right is not really about being civilised. It is about the culture—the culture precedes civilisation (civilisation being “polish”). English culture is the English Renaissance—Shakespeare, Newton, Drake; everything that made Britain Britain is a pale imitation of that virile age. High Victorianism—often beloved by conservatives—reflects English decadence.
The English had already become fussy, prissy, moralised—hysterical. At first the hysteria was over superficially “conservative” sexual matters—later it would turn into hysterics over “racism”, “sexism” etc. The polished civilised society cares about appearances—hence it is often the most polished members of society (Oxford, Harvard) who are most on the left, polished politeness turns to narcissistic decadence.
Christianity is not intrinsic to the West—it is an excrescence that grew, like Victorian moralism, during Rome’s decadence; it is an exotic foreign cult that was adopted just as Westerners today adopt Buddhism and yoga (in modified progressive forms). What is effective is your tribal cult—hence paganism is more effective than Christianity and Christianity is more effective than atheism.
No Western man really likes Christianity, because it is a religion for women and slaves and is not very effective—it stresses moralism and manipulation (a Christian strives to be “A good person” = harmless, like a woman). It’s like if you lived in a hot country and insisted that you only wore fur coats—it might be better than being naked, but it’s not effective attire.
Notably, the West became effective when it ditched Christianity—as happened in the Renaissance. The Christian period was a period of stasis in the West because Western minds were slaved to an ineffective alien idea—a narcissistic idea that denied reality with moralism (just like Marxism, which Christianity resembles, because these ideas spring from the same Semitic minds). In the same way, progressive ideas, like “wokeness”, induce stasis today—could induce 1500 years of stasis, if we let them.
All this is not to say that the feminine position is redundant. Politeness and social appearance do have value—it’s just that in Western societies everything is reversed, the feminine predominates under decadence. So we don’t ask about effectiveness first, rather we consider “what it looks like” and then we try to make reality conform to our narcissistic delusion as regards “how the world should be”—in a virtuous society we deal with the realities first and then garnish effective action with normative social signifiers.