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Stay Solar

Stay Solar

A reading of this essay is available as a bonus episode of Start The World.

Introduction:

Last year, I started promoting a slogan that seems to be catching on, and in response to a lot of questions about what it means to “stay solar,” I’ve decided to sketch out what I mean by it. I presented some of this material in a speech titled “Manly Idealism,” given at the 21 Convention in October 2019, and I expect that speech to be available online in a few months, first through 21 University, and then “free to the world.” 

Throughout human history, and certainly in Indo-European cultures, men have revered some force in the sky, associated with day and the light. The sky fathers and all-fathers reigned from above, and men looked upward to these primal patriarchs for guidance on how to live more righteously — how to take the higher path. As it is explained in Plato’s Republic, this highest force and greatest good isn’t quite the sun, but the sun is perhaps the best way to understand it — the sun is “the child of the good.” 

“Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature as more beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honor yet higher.”

— Plato. The Republic

In true, complete darkness, there is no truth or beauty whatsoever. True darkness is the void, and all things — all forms — are unintelligible. As Socrates makes clear, unlike the other sense organs, the eye requires light to see anything at all.

My formulation of what it means to stay or to be solar is a synthesis of mythic and scientific understandings of the sun and the nature of the cosmos. To our ancient ancestors, the sun made its way across the sky and disappeared at night, giving a sense to some that it was forced to “endure” the darkness and the night, only to emerge triumphant each morning. Today we know that the earth actually revolves around the sun, though the sun has its own very long orbit around the galaxy. Science tells us more than the ancients knew about gravity and space and the fiery nature of the sun, but to my mind, this information only enhances and adds depth to the analogies and metaphors about the sun and its influence over us. 

While the solar mindset is present and even articulated in many religions, I don’t believe it favors any particular one or conflicts with most of them. In fact, while the specific doctrines and elements of many religions may contain anti-solar elements that are servile and submissive or based in the dark jealousy of ressentiment, I believe that the qualities I am associating with the sun and solarity are consistent with the way most men envision a benevolent god or sovereign.

“…the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion…”

— Thomas Carlyle. On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History.

Many have asked me if “Stay Solar” is some kind of Stoic mantra. 

What “staying solar” has in common with Stoicism is emotional control, and as “life is conflict,” maintaining emotional control is a challenge that ends only after death. 

A lot of men talk about Stoicism without having read the Stoics. In the popular mind, Stoicism sometimes appears to mean “THIS IS SPARTA!!” or “suck it up” or “can’t hurt me” and lends itself to a lot of tryhard tough-guy posturing. This would probably confuse a sensitive, thoughtful fellow like Marcus Aurelius, who, as far as I can gather, was not very much like Leonidas at all. 

My beef with Stoicism is that it seems a bit too focused on acceptance, a bit too detached from outcomes…a bit too, “this is fine…” 

The sun is hot and violent, made of fire and storm — but it retains its shape, its path, its gravity and the system of order that spins around it. 

Gravity

Know your purpose. Stay centered and on task. Aim, whenever possible, to be an unmoved mover — to be a cause rather than an effect or the affected. Do not allow yourself to be pulled into petty disputes or frivolous pursuits. Remember who you are and what you are doing, and what your responsibilities are — and for all of it, why. Know your reasons and motivations — cultivate self-awareness.

One could call this “discipline,” but something about the word discipline sounds like a cracking whip to my ear — though it comes from the same root as “disciple” and implies the acceptance of teaching or an external order. 

Perhaps it is more productive and life-affirming to think about maintaining a clarity of identity and purpose, and evaluating patterns of thought and action in terms of whether or not they facilitate or contribute to that purpose. 

The sun is massive, stays on its own course and has a gravity of its own. The root of the word gravity means “weight” or “heavy.” The Romans considered gravitas a virtue, particularly in leaders. Speaking with gravity means conveying that weight by showing that you take yourself seriously, and that you are firm and will be “difficult to move” if you believe that your cause is righteous. 

This does not mean that you will never compromise or change your mind over time— that would be foolish and unwise — but it does convey a certain integrity and trustworthiness. People who change their beliefs depending on who they are talking to eventually reveal themselves to be untrustworthy, because their marks eventually compare notes. 

Order

As things shoot and move and float around them, objects with mass and weight and gravity are creators of orders and systems. Each sun is a creator of cosmos, of order, in the midst of the greatest chaos, the expansive disorienting void of outer space. 

Man seeks order and in the absence of order, creates his own provisional order. He does this with his environment, with the people around him, and his own psyche. Consciousness itself is cosmo-generative.

The creation of order is the primary characteristic of solarity. 

Do not confuse defiant creation with defiance for the sake of defiance. Defiant creation defies disorder to create order or rejects stagnant orthodoxy to improve an existing order. Defiance for its own sake merely perpetuates chaos. 

Illumination

Be a calm source of illumination that reveals truth, whether it is ugly or beautiful. Seek out the truth of things and share it with those who are interested or ready to hear it — but don’t become another street corner prophet shouting at strangers. 

Solarity is a paternal concept, so telling people the truth doesn’t always mean telling people what they want to hear. Sometimes it means telling them an uncomfortable truth that they need to hear — without malice or anger.

Do not confuse the revelation of truth with petty, trashy and malicious gossip. The prevailing Zeitgeist is salacious and gossip-driven. Anyone can be embarrassed and stripped of dignity. Few would want to be photographed on the toilet, though nothing is inherently wrong or shameful about going to the bathroom. What is the cumulative, overall truth of a person? What have they accomplished? How have they helped and inspired others? How do they treat the people around them?

Reveal the simple truth, like the sun at noon. 

Human life is more beautiful and interesting with an interplay of light and shadow, and there is value in mystery, but do not rely on shadow to obscure and deceive. Beware of people who romanticize the dark and want to remain in the shadows. What truth are they hiding? 

Be the light, and let the shadow reveal its absence.

Warmth

Without the sun, the Earth would be a frozen rock shooting through space. 

Take a moment to think about how life-giving that makes the sun. Every forest and field and jungle and blade of grass on Earth reaches toward it and depends on it. No animals, much less men, would be able to survive on earth without it. 

The sun can be blinding, and you can die from overexposure to its light. It is not benign, but it is for the most part benevolent — if we anthropomorphize a bit. 

Are you a source of life-giving warmth in the lives of the people around you, or a collapsed sun— a black hole that draws them in and crushes them. Do the people in your orbit and the people you come in contact with every day feel improved by your presence? Do you make the people around you better or worse?

People love to complain, but it doesn’t help them. Be a source of inspiration, not commiseration.

The sun has warmth and energy to spare. What it gives doesn’t deplete it in any meaningful way. 

Don’t operate in a “zero-sum” frame. Most of us are mobile, and we aren’t fighting over some closed, tiny market of friends, potential partners, or potential clients. Adopting an abundance mentality makes you appear more confident and less desperate — and ideally you will also become more confident and less desperate. 

Let the low-energy vermin fight over every scrap in the alley, and turn your mind to greater concerns. 

Conclusion

Any one of the virtues I’ve described above has been exalted by any number of religions, philosophies and motivational books. None of them are new. Each can be expanded upon and developed substantially. 

Men have idealized and modeled themselves after sky fathers and solar entities for thousands of years. The sun is a powerful symbol — in fact I can’t think of a symbol more figuratively or physically powerful. The sun is unifying and universal. We can all look upward to see and contemplate the same sun. We can look inward and cultivate our own solarity. There’s nothing arcane about the sun and nothing could be less “occult” — less hidden or secret. 

The slogan “stay solar” seems to have resonated with a lot of men, even men who years ago would have considered themselves drawn to darker or more oppositional ideologies. I believe that’s because it’s the right message, and it is the message men need right now. We live in an age of unhinged hysteria, where people feel compelled to react to or comment on a relentless barrage of trending outrages and curated “news” about strangers. All the old rules are in flux and no one seems to know what the new rules are yet. 

So, when you are surrounded by all of this confusion and anger, be like the sun. Remember who you are and who you want to be. You’re the man, so be the man. Be the order. Be the light. In the midst of chaos and darkness, stay solar. 

It’s a little like that line from Kipling’s “If.” 

“If you can keep your head when all about you, are losing theirs and blaming it on you…” 

Cultivating solarity is a response to darkness and confusion and anger and anxiety. It is a response to cynical nihilism, but it requires no retreat into childish naiveté or delusion. It’s optimistic, but not foolish. It’s a positive response to negativity. And it’s a personal response, because it starts with you. 

I do not claim to be the perfect embodiment of any of the virtues or ideas I have espoused above. I’m going to put the best of myself forward, but I believe that the world loves nothing more than to see the inevitable deflation of men who puff out their chests too far, claiming to be something that they are not. The gods have always punished hubris, and I value humility in myself and the men whom I admire. As I have written in the past, “this is for me, too.” Writers who connect with men authentically write the things they themselves want to read or need to hear. These are virtues I’m working on myself, not just preaching to others. 

Men can all do better, and we can all try a little harder to be and to stay solar. 

The “Solar Vision” Symbol

You’ll find this symbol on my work and throughout this web site. It represents my own synthesis of the overseeing eye and a sun wheel. 

This particular design is modeled after a Bronze Age sun wheel pendant originally found in Zürich, dated to the 2nd Millennium B.C. It was probably a Celtic symbol, as the Celts moved though the area around that time, so it likely would have been associated with the Celtic god Taranis, who was a god of thunder and lightning, not unlike Zeus or warrior gods like Thor or Indra. Lightning is often seen as a solar weapon, or as demonstrating the power of the god who rules the sky. Taranis was also depicted holding a wheel. The sun wheel, sun cross, or Sonnenkreuz symbolizes not only the sun, but motion and momentum, turning and action — referencing the spoked wheel and the terrible glory of the battle chariot. The sun itself is often represented by another deity, sometimes male (Helios), sometimes female (Sól/Sunna). However, the primary patriarch is sometimes believed to be “the eye in the sky.” 

I created this hybrid symbol for my book, A More Complete Beast, to represent the concept of “solar vision,” which has evolved in my mind to represent and include the concepts discussed above. 

The solar father as creative visionary who orders the world…

Usage and attribution 

I created this exact symbol, as far as I am aware, though there are certainly many other eyes in wheels and suns and similar symbols. 

My ideas are meant to be spread, so if you want to get this tattooed on your body or use it in a piece of your own artwork, I encourage this and grant my permission. 

If you post it online, please include a link to this page or my site or one of my social media accounts, along with a note of attribution. 

Please do not reproduce this symbol on merchandise to be sold for profit (or “non-profit”) without written permission from me, personally. 

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Ride In Power

Wild Hunt Illustration

The holiday season is the season of The Wild Hunt, an ancient European folklore motif that continues to manifest in the collective consciousness through the enduring story of Santa Claus — that bearded magic man from the North who rides through the air on Christmas eve, barely two days after Winter Solstice.

The theme of The Wild Hunt, or Die Wilde Jagd, was first identified by Jacob Grimm, who theorized that the recurring stories of some dread hunt or huntsman found throughout Germanic folklore were the persistent echoes of pre-Christian pagan beliefs.  

The hunters have been variously identified as dead warriors or simply the dead, and the hunt has been led by everyone from Cain to King Arthur, but Grimm believed it was Odin who originally led the hunt.

In the American West, the Wild Hunt recurred in cowboy legends that were immortalized in the song “Riders in the Sky.”

Visions of The Wild Hunt were often believed to be harbingers of doom and war, but Grimm thought that this was probably due the Christian demonization of indigenous European beliefs. 

These divinities present themselves in a twofold aspect. Either as visible to human eyes, visiting the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people that stream to meet them. Or floating unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on loar, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes : an array which, less tied down to a definite time, explains more the natural phenomenon. I suppose the two exhibitions to be equally old, and in the myth of the wild host they constantly play into one another. The fancies about the Milky Way have shewn us how ways and waggons of the gods run in the sky as well as on the earth. With the coming of Christianity the fable could not but undergo a change. For the solemn march of gods, there now appeared a pack of horrid spectres, dashed with dark and devilish ingredients. Very likely the heathen themselves had believed that spirits of departed heroes took part in the divine procession ; the christians put into the host the unchristened dead, the drunkard, the suicide, who come before us in frightful forms of mutilation.

Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology (Volume 3).

In researching this for a recent ritual at Waldgang, I was struck by the fact that in both the hunt and the lore regarding Valhalla, the valorous dead are actively engaged in joyous strife. Warriors hoped that if they were slain in battle, they would be chosen and find themselves among the other Einherjar. It was believed that in Valhalla, they would battle each other all day, and then be healed so that they could feast all night and then fight again the next day. 

This is a stark difference from those who yearn for an afterlife of rest and relaxation, of simple “happiness,” of passive communion with the divine, or even for an extinguishing end to cycles of death and rebirth. 

These noble, adventurous men dreamt of a “heaven” that promised endless adventure and lively struggle. They dreamt of man’s primal and primary occupation at the perimeter between order and chaos. They dreamt of hunting and fighting — forever and ever.

This spirit is captured by my favorite poem about the Wild Hunt, written by painter Arthur Fitger in the late Nineteenth Century. In it, Odin tells the reader to call him in the storm and the night to avoid the stifling grave and join in the wild hunting life for all eternity. 

Ruf’ mich in Sturm und Nacht
Empor, dich zu geleiten
Auf wilder Lebensjagd
Durch alle Ewigkeiten.

What we hope for in death also says something about what we want from life. 

Some dream of a heaven that promises a freedom from exertion, conflict and challenge. The reward they seek for a lifetime of struggle and suffering is an eternity of relaxation and recreation — or “oneness” with divinity. They have oriented themselves to “struggle to blank,” and they want to “rest in peace.” 

Perhaps some men feel most alive at a party or on vacation. Poolside with a margarita in hand. And while I’ll admit that sounds very nice, especially as I sit here watching the snow creep down from higher elevations, those aren’t the moments that define a man’s life. When I look back at the moments I am proud of, they are moments of creation or competition — moments of struggle and overcoming. Instants of inspiration and flow. 

It makes sense that ambitious and adventurous men who thrive on challenge and strife would dream not of eternal rest, but of an eternal ride. Of an endless adventure, engaged forever in the hunt or the fight. I have known many men like this, and in the absence of some immanent trial, they self-destruct. They don’t know what to do with themselves. Men of action need a purpose, an objective, some goal toward which they can direct their virile exuberance. 

Regarding the dead, I’ve heard men say, “rest in power.” 

Why wish them the torment of rest at all? Why not wish them a never-ending ride? 

Why not wish them, in death, the joy that they sought in life?

Why not say, “RIDE IN POWER?”

The act of riding is the most dynamic expression of the masculine principle. To ride is to seize some wild, chaotic thing and rein it in, to control it and impose your own will upon it with the loose snap of confidence and authority.

Imagine the audacious moment of the primal ride, when man first leapt on a horse and found he was able to give it direction and command that mass of muscle and breakneck speed. Imagine this moment repeated thousands of years later when men sat in the first automobiles fueled by fire, and again when they shot themselves into the sky, and again when they exploded themselves into space with the power of the sun.

This is the magic of the ride — that holy shit moment of daring and total engagement and total investment. It’s there in the hunt and the chase, it’s there in the battle, it’s there in the scrambling fight. This is the aggressive magic of men who train wolves and conquer women.

And, if I may quibble with Conan (from a wise distance), perhaps this is, truly, what is best in a man’s life. The ride.

This atavistic apparition, this dream of the wild dead hunting and fighting their way through the afterlife is a reminder to the living of what living is.

You can rest in peace if you want to, but there is more. Men become what they are when they venture out into uncertainty and assert themselves. That is how we have always been initiated — by learning to master and command chaos, in the world outside, in others, and in ourselves.

To initiate and continue this eternal becoming, to keep the wheel spinning, we must continue to seek out new challenges, new quests and quarries, and commit to that hunt. Commit to that fight.

COMMIT TO THE RIDE

Durch alle Ewigkeiten

“Wilde Jagd” – by Arthur Fitger

Wilde JagdWild Hunt
Es pfeift im Hagedorn,
Laut ächzt es in den Föhren,
Da läßt sein schmetternd Horn
Der wilde Jäger hören.

Hoch droben durch die Schlucht
Der sturmzerriss’nen Wolke
Jauchzt er in wilder Flucht
Vorbei mit seinem Volke.

Er schwingt den Eschenschaft
In erzgewalt’gen Händen,
Und Lebensüberkraft
Flammt in des Auges Bränden.

“Der du verschmäht die Rast
Des Himmels und des Grabes,
Der du begehrt die Last
Des ew’gen Wanderstabes,

Ruf’ mich in Sturm und Nacht
Empor, dich zu geleiten
Auf wilder Lebensjagd
Durch alle Ewigkeiten.

Die Seel’ erstickt in mir,
Denk’ ich der Gruft, der engen,
Und to bend möcht’ ich schier
Des Todes Fesseln sprengen.

Endlose Lebenslust,
Nein! du sollst nicht verrauchen,
Nicht elend in den Wust
Des Staubes untertauchen.

Wenn über meiner Gruft
Die Frühling
swinde pfeifen,
Wenn wirbelnd in der Luft
Die falben Blätter schweifen;

Dann bannt auch mich nicht mehr
Der dumpfe Totenhügel,
Dann jag’ auch ich daher
Auf freiem Sturmesflügel.”

It whistles in the hawthorn
Loudly it creaks in the pines
There his chilling horn
The wild hunter let hear

High above through the canyon
The storm-torn cloud
Exult he in wild escape
Over with his folk

He swings the ash tree shaft
In ore like/powered hands
And strength that goes beyond life’spower
In his eyes burning fires

“Thou who refuses to rest
In heaven or grave
Thou who crave the burden
Of the eternal wanderstick

Call upon me in storm and night
Up to give you retinue
On the wild hunt of our life
Through all eternity

The soul is suffocating in me
When I think of the so tight grave
And in fury I want
To burst the fetters of death

Endless lust of life
NO! You shall not vanish like smoke in the wind
Not miserable into the heap
Of dust drowning

When over my crypt
The winds of spring whistle
When twirling in the air
Pale leaves fly

Then I wont be captivated
By the dull hill of the death
Then I hunt around
On the free wings of the storm.
  Arthur Fitger . 1840 – 1909Translation: V. from Wölfe Nordland
Night sky over Waldgang. Jack Donovan. 2019.
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EVERYTHING (AND EVERYONE) IS REDUCIBLE

Jack Donovan, Author

It was late, and I was out for a post-shift drink with a bunch of waiters in San Francisco. They had all been toiling under the tyrannical toque of some French despot. It was the 90s, before the tantruming chef became a staple of reality television, but I’d already worked for a satanic chocolatier who’d harangued every food critic in town, so I knew the routine. 

Hearing the tales of the evening’s melodramas grated on me, because I was currently working in the corporate world and interacting with polite and approachable CEOs and CFOs. No one gets away with talking to people the way that chefs do — or did, back then. Drill sergeants and dictators were probably more personable.

That night, this particular prima donna of grub plating had been cruel to someone close to me. I’d had a few and I was on a rant. 

“Who does he think he is? What is he really anyway? He’s just a fucking cook!” 

A clever waiter responded, “Everybody’s just a fucking something.” 

I’m sure I probably glared at him and continued. But that stuck with me. 

He was right. Everyone is “just a fucking something.” 

Everyone is reducible. No matter what someone has accomplished in their lives, it’s easy to recategorize them in some banal way to humble or insult them. 

I’m just some fucking blogger. A “self-published” author. Thousands of hours of careful thought and hard work can be handily dismissed by any of the slurs that occasionally pepper my inbox. 

It works for everyone. Professional athletes are just trained seals, and Navy SEALs are just fucking pawns. World class powerlifters are just glorified beasts of burden. Notre Dame is, after all, just a fucking building. Da Vinci was just a dreaming doodler. Nietzsche was crazy. George Washington was, after all, just some fucking guy who put his breeches on one leg at a time just like everyone else. 

And this French fellow who had worked his whole life to become an internationally respected chef and was at that moment a major player in the San Francisco culinary scene was…just some fucking cook. 

I was reminded of all this while reading through Meditations recently. 

“How base and putrid, every common matter is! Water, dust, and from the mixture of these bones, and all that loathsome stuff that our bodies do consist of: so subject to be infected, and corrupted. And again those other things that are so much prized and admired, as marble stones, what are they, but as it were the kernels of the earth? gold and silver, what are they, but as the more gross fæces of the earth? Thy most royal apparel, for matter, it is but as it were the hair of a silly sheep, and for colour, the very blood of a shell-fish; of this nature are all other things. Thy life itself, is some such thing too; a mere exhalation of blood: and it also, apt to be changed into some other common thing.”

— Marcus Aurelius. Meditations (Book 9, 34.)

Marcus fucking Aurelius. What a spoiled self-important brat! 

“Look at me, I write my precious little journal in Greek instead of Latin because I’m a fussy intellectual philhellene.”

It’s so easy. 

Taking a step back, this reductiveness could be useful in keeping one grounded and to help avoid being swayed too easily by the influence of fame and titles and men’s high estimations of themselves. 

Maintaining a disciplined humility and a careful distance from the seduction of power and titles is probably a very good idea when you are the Emperor of Rome. You don’t want to go full Caligula. 

To meditate, as Marcus Aurelius did, on the baseness of all things, is a useful thought experiment. It could be a tool for putting problems in perspective, and for remembering the humanity of men who have been elevated to a godlike status. Remembering that all great men were merely men can actually make them more inspiring. It renders their achievements more accessible. 

While it is true that everything is reducible, and sometimes this reduction may be useful, this leveling of all things can also get out of hand. Reduction can be untruthful. 

Gold may be the shit of the earth, as Marcus Aurelius suggested, but truthfully I’d rather be covered in gold than shit. Wouldn’t you?

Returning to that chef… truth is that I was mad about the chef’s behavior and I was lashing out. While I would contend that the achievements of chefs are somewhat overvalued simply because fine dining is associated with wealth, status and luxury, I have some level of respect for any man who has mastered a craft and risen to the top of his profession. He may have been a dick, but he actually wasn’t “just some fucking cook,” even to me. That was an intellectually dishonest remark. 

As I have gotten older, I’ve developed a habit of acknowledging the talents, accomplishments and expertise of men with whom I disagree, or who have wronged me personally. Some have found it surprising. It would be easy to completely dismiss a man based on a flaw of character that I exposed or of which our friendship was simply another casualty. But it wouldn’t be truthful, and I don’t think speaking that way demonstrates wisdom. 

I’ve had close friends lie to me, or panic and lie to others while throwing me under the bus. I’ve caught men who I trusted playing games and angles behind my back. After discovering this, I’ll have nothing to do with them personally, and if asked, I’ll tell you why we’re no longer friends. However, I refuse to dismiss their positive qualities and insist that they are given credit where it is due. I’ve even occasionally sent them business. I don’t want them in my circle of trust, but it would be petty and vindictive of me to obsess about whether or not they make a few bucks doing what they actually do well. I’m proud of this habit, and I encourage it in others. 

Either you want to maintain an ordered, hierarchical reality where you value achievement, or you don’t. 

There is a prevailing bitchiness in the Zeitgeist, motivated by ressentiment, that wants to dismantle the statuary of greatness as a comfort to mediocrity, weakness and sloth. You can feed into that by finding a way to reduce everything (and everyone) to some lowest common denominator. You can gossip and snipe and trade in clever insults. 

Or you can defiantly choose to acknowledge and honor strength and achievement and a measuring stick of good, better, best — even when it’s inconvenient. Even when you’re mad. Even when you’re not the best, or maybe not even good. 

Because if you refuse to acknowledge an ideal — there is no “good.” No “better” or “best.” Nothing to reach for. No direction. No orientation. Only fleeting comfort and sensation. Randomness and chaos. 

Only the voluptuous horror of multi-dimensional nothingness. 

I think I’ll stop there for now. 

That sounds like a good title for a future essay. 

The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: “What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;” he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values.


Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil

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Recreation vs. Re-Creation

Re-Creation - Jack Donovan

I wrote this a couple of years ago, in response to discussions I was having with someone I was mentoring. It is one aspect of what the ouroboros (the ancient symbol depicting the serpent that eats itself) has come to mean to me personally — applied as an approach to living a creative life, and life-as-art. 

RECREATION AND THE STRUGGLE TO BLANK

Men of this age, in this Empire of Nothing, have been trained to work for the end.

The weekend, the end of work, the end of life.

Like prisoners who have been promised an hour in the yard, men have been promised that in return for five days of work, they will be released from employment to enjoy two days of “free time.” At work, they must do what the company wants them to do and take care not to say anything that the company has deemed inappropriate. During these two days, celebrated in America as “the weekend,” working men are encouraged to “relax.” They are “free” to be “who they really are”—though increasingly even this time is monitored by employers and potential employers for signs of undesirable habits or viewpoints. Workers describe themselves by listing the kinds of leisure activities they prefer, as well as the foods, beverages and entertainment products they choose to consume when they are permitted to “relax.” Their identities — their very lives — are defined almost entirely by recreational choices.

Beyond the weekend, men have been taught to work for vacations, and eventually, retirement — the big weekend granted to workers when they have reached the end of their useful working years.

This plebeian end-orientation is complemented by afterlife-oriented religions. What is it that people expect to do in Heaven anyway? Isn’t it a pleasant, white “blank?” A softly lit question mark? An eternal happiness in stasis? A measured, consistent drip of your favorite endorphins? Those who view life as suffering see death as a reward — a forever weekend — a time when they can finally “relax” and end the suffering of living.

This is the sprit of the age, this linear “struggle to blank.” Men have been trained to struggle to an end, and at the end, they are permitted to “relax.” The word relax comes from a root that means to loosen. In his struggle to relax, man merely seeks a little slack in his bondage and a break from his chores. Recreation is his reward for work.

RE-CREATION AND THE STRUGGLE TO STRUGGLE

The Noble Beast seeks not recreation, but RE-CREATION!

The great man’s recreational preferences are the least notable, the least interesting things about him. What kind of wine did Caesar drink? Who cares?! It’s merely amusing trivia — a tiny, forgettable detail set against the grand scale of his life story.

The master creates! He is known by his works, not his pastimes. His life is not suffering! The Noble Beast is glad to be alive. He is glad to be able to exert his strength and will and intellect. He is pleased to be able to continue to create again and again. The Noble Beast doesn’t want to relax, he wants to keep becoming, to keep making himself anew.

When a man is forced to work, he looks forward to a slackening of bonds and a break from the whip.

When a man forces himself to work, he works to realize a vision, but during the process more visions reveal themselves to him, so he finds himself working not toward an end of work, but toward the next beginning—to get to “what’s next.”

The creative man is a self-turning wheel, a self-consuming serpent — an ouroboros — gnawing away at his own flesh to feed his own growth. The creative beast seeks no end. He consumes the end, over and over again in a continual process of generation and becoming. He digests life inch by inch, and with childlike exuberance, he says YES to himself and chews ever forward.

Artwork by Rotten Fantom
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