Within the context of “The Solar Warrior” trilogy this third book entitled “A New Hope” emerges by providing a series of contents that constitute the authentic acid test for whoever ambitions to incarnate again the archetype of the Solar Warrior in the specific conditions of the 21st century. “Specific conditions”: this is the fundamental premise of this whole third volume. While in the case of “Origins, Rise and Decline” as in “The Eclipse”, the mythical, legendary and strictly historical aspects of the ephemeral apparition of the Solar Warrior are more emphasized within the human domain, in this third book: “A New Hope” has been chosen to get grounded in our specific age, the 21st century. And yet, the fact of intending to “become grounded” isn´t such an easy task in our times, even for he who aims to vigorously follow the heroic path…
This is so because in general in industrial and technologically advanced societies the forms of knowledge we drag in our psyche and the links or experiences we establish with the actual world are more and more confined in separate domains. Hence, on one hand we deeply cherish a huge amount of cultural, political and scientific notions that were quite efficacious for specific social layers of the West during the 19th and 20th centuries, but that now however are completely inapplicable within the specific conditions of the 21st century. Thus, whenever we face the challenging task of defining these “specific conditions” we lack an adequate criteria or viewpoint; a criteria adapted to our times. There are those who might consider that the scientific method can be used in these cases, and in effect we believe that such approach constitutes a foundational requirement, yet even when the scientific method is rigorously applied it is always important to maintain high doses of prudence since -as already explained more in detail in “The Eclipse”- such methods can serve forms of knowledge that the observer might be in many cases perfectly unaware of.
This caution has impeded me in this second book from approaching the “specific conditions” of our times by means of a strictly scientific knowledge, since as already shown in “The Eclipse”, the fact of approaching the physical domain of our times by exhausting the possibilities that offer the ensemble formed by the scientific-reductionist paradigms, the non-linear physics paradigms and the cybernetic paradigms carried us to a point where inevitably the spirit of the observer fuses with the spirit of whatever is observed. Ultimately one can only observe in the world what one is with regard to one´s multiple expressions, and therefore the great question ultimately becomes: Who is here the observer?…
It is precisely at this point that myth has assisted us to get off the hook. Even though in this third book of “The Solar Warrior” trilogy the approaches regarding myth and legend that are much more present in the volume “Origins, Rise and Decline” are put aside, actually the guiding golden thread of all the development and all the specific viewpoints embraced regarding the conditions of our times has been ultimately accomplished in this third book “from an eagle´s view”, this is, by fusing with Solar principles.
This has been the decided standpoint. And it should already seem at a first glance the most appropriate, since we definitely live in times where the available distances have increased in an inverse proportion to the available amounts of available time. And by embracing warrior-like notions and worldviews that have been lost in the mist of times, and which to a large extent defined a way of experiencing the world rather than a mere way of just thinking about it, with regard to the approach to our times we´ve been assisted in recovering the value of action, as an expression of a praxis, or a mode of operating upon the physical domain that follows very specific aims, even though these aims are not necessarily known by the individual who exerts such actions due to the existence of the aforementioned gap between the rusty concepts we drag and the comprehension of the symbolic aspects of our actions.
And within the domain of the specific and effective actions upon the material plane, it has been shown in the second book of the trilogy “The Eclipse” how in our urban/industrial societies the nature of human actions upon the world -or the specific praxis- are of a technical/cybernetic/functional kind. In the realm of organization, States and individual relations, these forms of action precisely allow the individual in the 21st century to become integrated within society and participate. Obviously there exists a chaos of many other actions exerted by individuals in our times, yet there exists however a progressive monopoly of the technical/cybernetic/functional; actions, and when facing the intrinsic power of these action forms, whatever the individual believes or thinks has less and less relevance, since such beliefs or thoughts cannot direct such actions in any way.
What entity actually exerts this monopoly? The Techno-System, which we´ve already described and defined in depth in the second book “The Eclipse”. To put it briefly, the Techno-System corresponds to an entity or SuperState of a planetary order that monopolizes the actions of organizations, States and individuals towards a very specific direction. In addition, the global economic subsystem has also submitted to the determinisms of the Techno-System, and ultimately the only praxis that allows an organization, an individual or a State to nowadays gain an economic profit in the case of productive operations is if the cybernetic/functional component of their decisions and implementations are promoted and centralized. And yet these advantages go hand in hand with a series of important consequences at a human level, which progressively create a number of dependencies and attachments between men and the functional mechanisms of their environment that imply the modification of the psycho-somatic configurations of the individual, which almost always remain confined to the subconscious domain, with there not existing nowadays in practical terms teachings or methods that can allow the homo-technologicus to be aware of such forces.
When encountering this latter situation, to even consider the existence of human liberty is quite illusory, since the patterns and automatisms introduced within the deep recesses of the psyche by the functional configurations of the technological environment substantially modify the direction of the individual's actions, with the individual ulitimately lacking the capacity to govern such impulses. And yet in no case does this situation have to be dramatic, since on the other hand, the mechanistic and functional environment integrated within the Techno-System provides the individual with a whole series of virtual compensations -that is to say, compensations that don´t have any effect on his capacity to make actual decisions- where however the individual “builds” or “creates” the purely artificial illusion of the freedom of choice. The lack of freedom in addition to the lack of existential traumas is what can facilitate in our times the relatively new condition of happy and self-satisfied slave.
This illusion granted by the Techno-System to the individual who is well integrated within it corresponds to an illusion that has became manifest in our days in two main branches: the illusion with regard to the individual use of technique, and the illusion that modern politics, science and public opinion can direct in advance both the direction of technological and industrial development. The illuison of the use of modern technique is explained in detail in “A New Hope” as the false idea that men can determine a “good” or “bad” goal for a given technological device. It is shown in this third book of “The Solar Warrior” how in the case of modern devices of a systemic essence, any moral “superstructure” is totally incompatible with the intrinsic development potentials of the technological infrastructure itself. This is so to a large extent because the modern technical object has became cybernetic and systemic, and such transformation necessarily implies that the analysis of any “individual use” necessarily becomes radically different. Hence, in our times it is very naïve to separate the devices or gadgets from the global-scale industrial and technological infrastructure that made them possible. This industrial and systemic infrastructure has been defined in “A New Hope” as the container of the Techno-System, where can be found all impersonal determinisms and laws that direct it autonomously. Within this container or matrix of the Techno-System are integrated the contents where the individual enjoys the freedom of choosing from a wide variety of uses and consumptions, even though none of these uses or consumptions can modify an iota the container, in a similar way as to how the colour of the body of a car corresponds to an individual decision that doesn´t alter the technical characteristics of the car´s motor. In other words: thousands of cars painted with the most diverse spectrum of colors all go practically at the same average speed when circulating through the urban environment…
Therefore, an individual might use a car in order to take his kids to school or runover and kill, yet none of these marginal individual decisions can modify an iota the overall direction of technological and industrial development of the whole automotive sector, which follows autonomous and impersonal determinisms that even transcend the economic domain. This doesn´t mean that men are necessarily subjected to a system that beats them down and subjugates them at its own will; actually even though the development of the Techno-System is autonomous as an unbridled giant, this doesn´t entail that men, by following the heroic path, are impeded from situating themselves in a position of absolute freedom when challenging the different levels of technical phenomena integrated in the Techno-System. So this is why, following here Marshall McLuhan´s thesis “the medium is the message”, in our days true human freedom consists of actions that freely elect the existent means integrated within the container of the Techno-System, leaving in the background the supposed value of the contents, which are ultimately highly virtual with regard to their influence both in men´s consciousness and in the configuration of the external world. Hence, by putting forth here a simple and introductory example of the latter, true human liberty actually consists in dominating the desire of turning the T.V. set or smartphone on or off, and not in the pseudo-form of freedom that consists of choosing among a wide variety of 200 T.V channels or web-sites, after having been in direct contact with the contents of such channels or web-sites.
All these ideas might sound pretty radical to the reader, and in this third book of “The Solar Warrior” trilogy it is also assumed that the reader must practice the virtue of patience in order to progressively perceive this worldview within his/her direct experience. Of course, one of the other conditions required in order to attain this worldview demands on the part of the aspirant to Solar Warrior purging the illusion of modern politics.
“Political illusion” is an expression taken from the French philosopher Jacques Ellul in the book of his which has the same title. If one intends to extrapolate towards the level of national governments the powerlessness of the individual when it comes to determining the direction of technological development, there emerges the logical question regarding if modern political representatives and governors can become capable of leading or directing such process. In order to answer this question we must determine which are the finalities that the political classes propose and which are the means that are available in order to make possible in practical terms such goals. By rigorously restricting our analysis to the conditions existent within the modern urban/industrial societies, we´ll see how the successful modern politician is he/she who proposes to the citizens goals that refer to economic growth and the well-being of the electors and citizens. These two latter goals are only possible to satisfy by means of an adequate and optimal management of the economic means of production, which are of a technical and technological nature. And in this case, the individuals who are capable in practice of favouring and optimising the development of such means are not the politicians, but the ensemble formed by the engineers, the scientists, the technicians, and the technocrats. What´s then the role of politicians in all of this? Both politicians and the contents of public opinion (celebrities, famous sports players, artists, etc) essentially serve as to fortify the conscious and unconscious attachment of the individual and voter to specific ideologies (happiness, work, progress…) which are necessary in order to mobilize the resources that allow the incessant development of the Techno-System to become possible. In other words, the political domain, by having constituted an aim in the West before the 20th century, after the constitution of the Techno-System during the last century became a means, a content of a spectacular nature that has no influence in the container of the Techno-System.
Again, the latter thesis might seem quite radical to the reader, and yet in this third book it has became tested in the “laboratory” of the world in the case of a very specific and crucial phenomena… Let´s see…
Review of "A New Hope" by Living Traditions Magazine
From an exclusively technocratic viewpoint, the Techno-System constitutes the most advanced form of a technological and industrial civilization, and as any other civilization, it is also prone to inevitable processes of development and decline. In the case of the Techno-System, its necessary yet not sufficient conditions of existence are the following:
a) a mass technological society composed of individuals who act based on the ideologies of happiness (comfort), work, science, and material progress, and
b) Easy availability of material and energetic resources
In the case of the Techno-System we can reliably verify that factor a is still thriving, but that in the case of the condition b we are already experiencing important problems. In general, as long as there is an easy availability of material and energetic resources almost any technical problem can have a technical solution. But if factor b fails, then technological development starts to inevitably decelerate, and the role of the technicians starts to become more and more inoperative.
The development speed of the Techno-System is highly dependant on a specific ratio, the global EROEI (Energy return on energy investment), which expresses the amount of net energy obtained by the system in the global processes of energy production. This EROEI has been declining since already some time ago, and this plunge is irreversible, since the Techno-System is unable to recycle the dissipation caused in the finite resources it depends on. This shall necessarily produce during the following years a decline, followed by an abrupt collapse of the Techno-System. So… Houston, we´ve got a problem… Are today´s politicians actually reacting in the face of this real and in no case virtual issue?
Absolutely not, and ultimately they are just “following the script”, since the function of modern politicians is that of feeding the desires of the integrated masses within technological societies. By contributing to the latter there appeared in relatively recent times the ideology of “sustainability”. And we use the term “ideology”, since after having being during its origins a term that implied a stable and harmonic link between men and the environment, it has ended up becoming a mere justification for the development and implementation of systemic/cybernetic technologies such as the smart grids and the production of energy from renewable resources by employing wind-turbine and photovoltaic technology, etc. In the case of smart grids the criteria of its implementation is that of enhancing efficiencies and the distribution of energy for society, which are already experiencing in productive terms diminishing production returns. Up to this point everything seems reasonable, and even having common sense… And however the comprehension of the Techo-System´s laws allows us to see in this volume “A New Hope” how these measures reinforce even more the internal imperatives of the Techno-System, which in an aggregate form always demands constant growth of the energetic depletion of the planet. And this phenomena which takes place in the entire domain of the “eco-efficient” technologies can also be applied perfectly well to the domain of PV solar, wind-turbines, and more recently the “fracking” process taking place in the U.S. The latter in no case means that the future of the production of energy in a sustainable way won´t be by resorting to renewable sources, but that if such production is effectively accomplished in the future in a truly sustainable way, it will have to be free from the Techno-System´s imperatives.
Absolutely none of these technologies is capable, even considering the hypothesis that they could be applied at a global level, of compensating for the decline of the global EROEI, which actually corresponds to the true “oxygenation” of the Techno-System and everything that depends on it; an “oxygen” that is much more crucial than the availability of strictly financial resources such as money. At the end of the day, the so-called “global-debt” corresponds to a debt between the incessant development demands on the part of the Techno-System, and the capacity of human societies and the planet to keep up with such demands.
These demands shall never be able to be fully satisfied because of strictly energetic limitations, and eventually the “rules shall be broken”, or better expressed, the house of cards of the Techno-System shall abruptly fall apart in historical terms. The irreversible steep inclination of this decline is linked to the high levels of integration of the Techno-System in all its aspects, which concedes its considerable fragility and incapacity for self-regulation whenever the energetic demands are not satisfied. This foreseeable phenomena can entail scenarios of the most diverse that the reader is free to speculate about of course, but that however in “A New Hope” have been intended to become outlined with regard to their most destructive and constructive existential aspects for the individual who ambitions to become a Solar Warrior.
Probably one of the most negative phenomena that shall emerge during the process of global collapse shall be that which in “A New Hope” is defined as the tyrannical rebellion of the masses. By resorting to several authors who have mastered the concept of “mass-men”, in this third book of “The Solar Warrior” trilogy it is pointed out that the Techno-System demands of the individual the adoption of passive, obedient or “stimulus-response” attitudes in order to gain a more enhanced cybernetic integration, but that once the ideological superstructure and the material infrastructure of the Techno-System inevitably collapses, passive kind of attitudes will no longer be useful and the individual shall ultimately be forced to face himself. In situations such as the latter can emerge in the conscious mind the repressed inner tension or drives: hatred, affections or disaffections that demand their booty in the world, giving place to subversive, corrupt, destructive, anarchic attitudes at all levels. If there exists a kind of individual predisposed to adopting such behaviours it shall be the plebes or the scum, which in our times in no way are no longer related to the economic or social-status conditions of existence of the individual.
In such situations characterized by civilization chaos it shall be very important for the Solar Warrior to acknowledge which are the characteristics of both the plebes, scum and those of the mass-individuals, since both respectively represent twilight incarnations of the SuperDragon and the Techno-System; they represent conservative forces, retrograde standpoints coming from the darkness, which the Solar Warrior must not only defeat exteriorly but overall within himself.
It is thus at this stage where the poison can be synthesised into a medicine, and this is of course the aim exposed in the second part of “A New Hope”
In the second part of “A New Hope” a necessary return to values that some might call “archaic” is accomplished, even though actually in this third book of “The Solar Warrior” trilogy such values are conceived rather as eternal, not of course in a romanticist or idealist way, but in the sense that no culture nor creative link established among men and their new conditions of existence have ever occurred without such principles, which are thereafter incarnated in the case of princes, royalty and nobility.
Nevertheless, this majestic incarnation is not but a “final product”, a “finished product” such as that of a Sword that has to first go through high fusing temperatures in order to become finally forged. And it is precisely the Solar Warrior he who aspires to such forging, even though in the long term the necessary condition that shall guarantee the final accomplishment of the goals by going through pain, sufferings and the hellish fires of such experiences shall be the noble condition. Thus, in this second part the concept of “noble” has been recovered with regard to its most primordial meanings and thus has been divested of all connotation referring to natural born privileges and titles of nobility that nowadays are not but mere empty shells, since at the end of the day nobility can only be put to the test in the case of combat and battle, and not precisely in “glamorous” parties full of paparazzis of the cuore (sensationalist journalists). Besides, the noble man who aspires to be a Solar Warrior has no concern about the mawkishness of this form of cuore lifestyle since he has, deep down, a noble heart, an honest, loyal and authentic heart that he constantly exposes to combat and fighting in an inversely proportional way as he becomes exposed to cocktails, well-being lifestyles and all other forms of make-up.
In no way does the truly noble man want to live well. He wants to fight. This is why in this second part of the “A New Hope” is exposed a radical and revolutionary treatise on the Noble Warrior, as the foundational condition to attain a regal and Solar condition, that of the Solar Warrior, that today -as in all times- shall at the end constitute the light and beacon of the eternal kingdom of the Solar Empire.
Appendix on marriage
At the end of this third book is incorporated a treatise or appendix about marriage that has been considered important. At first I was not sure if it was editorially better to append it to this third book of the trilogy or to the other two, but finally we chose to incorporate here, since this third book is more related to the “here and now” that the aspirant to Solar Warrior has to face in his task.
A treatise regarding marriage was written, since the candidate to Solar Warrior must also be very aware of how crucial for his fight is the establishment of very specific links with the opposite sex. Thus, taking into account that the Noble Warrior of the 21st century has as a main enemy the Techno-System, and by acknowledging that this power -which is still rather invisible for most of our contemporaries- became ubiquitous, chances are that the option of modern marriage is not recommendale for the aspirant to Solar Warrior while forging his fight, and while “burning” all means in the bonfire and flames of his solar aspiration.
Why not recommendable? Because marriage, today as always, corresponds to a State institution, legitimated by a given structure of power, where both man and woman (or in homosexual forms which don´t necessarily correspond to modern forms of marriage, but rather existed in other times) get together in order to share a form of understanding life. This latter agreement is the determining factor for the success of a marriage, and is also a factor that surpasses the economic, sexual, affective and social domains. And in the same way that in the Middle-Ages marriages were legitimated in the West by the form of State existent at that time --the Church -- today marriages are sanctioned by the Techno-System, not in a clear visible way, but rather by interpretation of the elements that surround the marriage ceremonies of our days.
Can the Noble Warrior participate in this fidelity oath with a worldview that he is actually fighting against? In no way. Such act would ultimately constitute the proof of his inner abdication and wrong calling. And yet the Noble Warrior can freely establish relations with women, this is, unconditional links where both the Noble Warrior as his female counterpart can serve the same idea, that of the Solar Empire, an idea that nowadays is not materialized anywhere, but that can only be cherished by the heart. And in this sense, both the Noble Warrior and his girlfriend can share the deepest recesses of their hearts, experiencing very likely the most liberated and elevated forms of human love.
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