If you’re expecting one of those limp appeals to compassion explaining how Wokeness hurts those who it claims to help, I assure you that what follows is a far more brutal exercise. The purpose of which is to inflame the opposition to equity among those who would have welcomed such an entry past the internal Overton Window their own sense of decency tends to restrict them to, as well as to make those who are already militantly against it even more resolute in their commitment toward facilitating its destruction. The age we were born into cannot be restored, and the one we are entering is not for the timid.
It began with a seemingly trivial tweet amidst the ocean of other trivial tweets:
Out of nothing more than casual curiosity, I looked up the video of this legendary performance which I’ve embedded below and was surprisingly moved by the most predictable part aside from the victory itself: the crowd’s reaction.
More specifically, the progression of their reaction. The intensity of what began as a standard cheer grew in direct proportion to the size of Secretariat’s lead- advancing from increasingly earnest enthusiasm to passionate devotion and culminating in frenzied euphoria as he crossed the finish line.
It may appear like a matter of course on the surface, but on a purely logical level, this seems odd. Obviously, sporting events get similar reactions all the time, but that’s due to the irrational passion of tribal affiliation for a home team that elicits the powerful biological stimulus of “We won!”. But there is no “we” here. It’s a horse. It wasn’t just the people who had money riding on him either, it was universal- besides, by the final stretch he had an 18-length lead and the victory wasn’t in question, yet everyone continued to lose their minds in progressively severe fashion.
Let’s take a deeper look into the phrase “lose their minds”. One can imagine shortly after the starting gun a spectator might occasionally be peppered by thoughts unrelated to the race and would generally maintain their inner monologue. Yet as the race goes on, you can almost feel those other cognitive functions being involuntarily removed from their mind-space as the extent of the lead grew one length after another until their entire subjective experience was consumed by what they were witnessing.
In neuroscientific terms, seeing a horse moving fast temporarily turned off their default mode network- the autobiographical part of our minds occupied with ourselves, the past, and the future when our attention isn’t completely focused on a task or something else in the external world. Psychedelics do the same thing- experiences known for leaving users with a powerful sense of awe frequently compared to religious phenomena. If you’re interested in exploring the science of awe in more detail, I’ll link to the paper by Jonathan Haidt and Daniel Keltner here, but the point is the Belmont performance clearly triggered this rare, elusive emotion. Finally, we’ve arrived at the force responsible for bringing spectators of a horse race to a state comparable to religious intoxication.
Distinction
Yes, that’s all: Distinction. The crowd at the Belmont didn’t just rise to their feet during the final stretch, they were pulled by the metaphysical force that accompanies an act implicitly recognized as exceptional. That’s why the intensity of their cheer grew in direct proportion to the length of Secretariat’s lead- i.e. how just how distinct the performance was becoming. What Secretariat did shouldn’t have been possible, and yet he was doing it. It may not have been divine revelation, but its removal from the mundane brought it into relationship with the divine. People innately revere entities and phenomena that register as sufficiently distinct from whatever baseline they’re accustomed to to the point they’re treated as sacred.
Spiritual epiphanies and ineffable psychedelic experiences overwhelm people due to their extreme exceptionality- the very fact they do not fit into one’s expectations, world models, or fundamental understanding of reality is what makes them significant. Secretariat’s performance overwhelmed people in the same way for the same reason- whether they wanted to or not, they were physiologically compelled to regard it as both important and good.
Good Things Are Good. Great Things Are Great.
Significant distinction in and of itself seems to generate automatic veneration wherever it appears. This is why even when the internet provides access to endless pictures of models and the ability to witness any sexual act imaginable, men can still be stopped in their tracks and their brains briefly shortcircuit by nothing more than a woman of exceptional beauty walking past them (they are “awestruck”). Or why people can be brought to tears by things as disparate as paintings, songs, dances, or ten-second clips of simple acts of kindness to animals.
You may have noticed that when people report the subjective effects of these experiences they don’t say they “moved”, they say they “were moved”. Whether they plan to or not, humans will always be attracted to the exceptional because we were designed to be; an instinct no less foundational than the one to procreate. Our species was built with wiring emitting a primordial impulse to be drawn to that which evokes the feeling of awe. Equity rejects that force, seeking to eliminate what nature has decreed we pursue.
The drive toward the exceptional is not merely to witness it but to try and partake in it ourselves right from the start. Boys are inclined to have posters of their favorite athletes on the wall, girls are inclined to have the targets of their affections on theirs. Objects of emulation and adoration, respectively. Equity insists each personage on a wall unfairly takes the place of someone else that wants a spot, depriving us both of what we seek and what we seek to become.
Even in adulthood, the terminology we use for the nebulous forces that permeate all levels of social interaction reflects our subordinate role to these phenomena, implying physical forces or magical powers: “Magnetism” “Allure” “Drawn to” “Charm” “Spell” “Hypnotic”. These qualities are frequently attributed to the will of the ones who exude them, yet we don’t say the same thing about physical attraction. When two people are sexually attracted to one another, we acknowledge that it’s “chemistry”. A phenomenon of nature two people merely partake in, not direct. Those who distinguish themselves in a manner that generates magnetism or awe or reverence work the same way; accordingly, our brains are programmed to acknowledge those people tend to belong on top of hierarchies.
Equity says all the above is bullshit and hierarchies are purely manmade conspiracies to make some people’s lives not as good as they wish they were. Dear reader, there is only one thing that generates this level of delusion- the reason the cult of equity simmers with zealous fervor is because that is precisely what is required to suppress the natural drive of Life to Will itself toward greater heights over time. People debating “Is this thing a religion or not?'' fail to realize it could never be anything else. While the wiring I mentioned regarding reverence for the exceptional can’t be eliminated, unfortunately, it can be repurposed. Those wires strictly carry intense currents, and if they don’t carry reverence, they must carry hatred. Raging, inexhaustible hatred.
The Reality Behind The Mask
If everything I’ve said so far about the recognition and pursuit of distinction being responsible for nearly everything we value and making life worth living is true, what is an accurate assessment of the opposite and those that perpetuate it? Simple: Evil. I’m not a religious man, but I do know ancient texts contain a great deal of wisdom and to my (layman’s) knowledge, the Antichrist can basically be summarized as a figure that deceives the masses into believing he is the Word of God, but ultimately only delivers the opposite. He seems good but isn’t good. In fact, he’s quite bad. While I may not personally believe scripture to a T, I believe there is sufficient intuition in these claims to accurately predict this very phenomenon. It’s only natural people 2000 years ago anticipated it would manifest as an individual, but it actually ended up being distributed among many individuals.
A quick Google search describes the AntiChrist as the following: “A Destroyer”, “an Opposer of God”, “a Substitute”, “a Deceiver”, “a Heretic”, and “a Politician”. The heretical branch of Christianity known as Leftism that accumulates political power by manipulating the masses through lies that convince them their evil actions are virtuous while replacing their previous belief system and destroying their society in the process fits the role suspiciously well, don’t you think? Some choice excerpts include the following:
“He will disregard God’s Word and God’s law and replace it with his own arbitrary laws. He will re-define what is evil and what is good”
“He will spiritually and eternally destroy all who believe him and follow him”
“This is not necessarily an enemy from outside the church, but from inside it. He opposes Christ by replacing him”
“He will head up a kingdom, even an empire, similar to other nation states or empires”
“Deception will be replaced with destruction, fraud will give way to force, the wolf in sheep’s clothing will shed his fleece and bare his fangs.”
I’ve said before that the transition from Liberalism to Wokism occurred because the former failed at playing God so it decided to become the Devil. It’s only in hindsight that I recall Lucifer’s origins were always in Heaven to begin with. Easily identifiable by the path of chaos and destruction in its wake wherever it’s appeared; Communism, Progressivism, Wokism, whatever you want to call it is just a multi-generational, decentralized Antichrist. One dispersed Networked Hate destroying everything that makes life worth living (both spiritually and materially); framing its bile as Gospel, and painting you as the evil one for the sin of preferring actual horse races to ones handicapped to end in a tie. If you have reservations about giving the slower horses preferential treatment for the best equipment, there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with you.
That’s why the work is never done, that’s why the guilt of the original sin can never be scrubbed away: because what they seek to cleanse you of is an impulse the universe saw fit to engrave into your genetic blueprint hundreds of thousands of years before you were born and replace it by what was written by a handful of men 150 years ago and is currently regurgitated by morons, snakes, and lunatics of varying stripes whose only shared quality is their inability to produce any themselves.
The Costs
Equity is anti-meaning; an existence devoid of honor or purpose. While no one is spared from the costs Equity inflicts, depriving competition from men is particularly insidious as it robs them of their reason for being. It would be like taking away motherhood from women. Or taking away motherhood AND the downtrodden minorities they redirect that instinct to as a backup from white women. We have no life force otherwise. There is no Hero’s Journey because in Equity’s eyes, aspiring to heroism takes away an opportunity from someone else to do it, even though they never will. Carl Jung said “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you are” and now that’s forbidden in case your life’s purpose exceeds the capacity of someone else’s.
There is no room for Secretariats in their world. Elon Musk became the primary antagonist of Equity Enjoyers the moment he became the epitome of extreme distinction. They despise distinction- they abhor the astounding, and they condemn the commendable. They revile what they should revere and revere what they should revile. That’s why tens of millions of people reacted to the picture of Jordan Neel as if Daniel Penny was a trophy hunter posing with an endangered snow leopard and won’t be satisfied with anything less than life in prison or death.
Equity is when you are deprived of the best and ordered to exalt the worst, and it is the current operating principle of the most powerful country on the planet. If Ben Franklin was onto something when he said “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch”, I’ll provide my own update and summarize late-stage democracy as a handful of slow horses and Secretariat voting on whose legs should get broken.
Speaking of democracy, let’s check in on Equity’s impact on more practical matters. The trillions of dollars our government has spent on equity thus far have nothing on the true costs lying in store, as inverting natural hierarchies will eventually deprive you of things as fundamental as electricity and clean drinking water. Those are last, of course; before that is the litany of complex systems you take for granted- from healthcare to transportation to the legal system. Higher education is already a casualty that can only be referred to in the past tense. From the most transcendental spiritual moments to the #1 substance you require to live and everything in between- if you like any of those things, equity isn’t for you.
A Simple Request for Open-Minded Progressives
We’re done talking about Progressivism as if the moral claims its essence hinges on have any legitimacy. This isn’t 2017 when people were curious about what those kooky college kids were up to and were still interested in finding a compromise between citizens with different viewpoints but equally valid input into the way things should be. It’s over. Progressivism failed. Weep for it. Mourn for it. Do what you need to. But do it on your own time cuz I sure as shit ain’t giving you any more of mine.
Perhaps you are one of the many sane, decent people on the Left struggling to abandon something that promised a beautiful future as the fruits of its actual labor erode the ground beneath your feet in the present. I acknowledge your pain, but whether it’s an intellectual problem of failing to grasp the true nature of the ideology quite literally in the process of destroying civilization or a character problem of basic cowardice is not my concern- either way, figure it out.
Did events have to turn out this way? If we could redo things, could we have done it better? Best to purge your mind of those thoughts because we simply don’t have time to do something as foolish as to try to make it work so we’ll never know. The international order is collapsing and a large chunk of the financial system along with it, AI is here for real and only growing stronger, and a litany of additional advances we’re not prepared for is on the horizon- we don’t have time to continue having interminable, mendacious arguments like whether or not all horses are born equally fast when the outcomes of the races stay the same no matter what track we put them on.
There is a binary choice in how you spend the present: You can waste it attempting to rectify the past, or you can spend it building a better future. Considering you’re currently enjoying the fruits of the first choice, there shouldn’t be much need to strongly advocate on behalf of the second. Unfortunately, Equity has burned through modern intellectuals' brains like a nuclear core through tinfoil and they’re too busy writing 150-page dissertations on how transgender Somalians invented the microwave to come to that realization themselves.
Cut it out. Drop it. No one believes this shit anymore and the lies just keep getting more insulting to anyone that retains some semblance of a relationship to reality. It’s the ideological equivalent of a 56-year-old man who had a dream to be a rock star as a teenager who refused to acknowledge any feedback reality provided and is now trying to convince people with a straight face his xylophone career is about to take off.1
Some Simple Advice for Non-Progressives
Let me be abundantly clear: anyone who attempts to make you prioritize delusional self-images, identities, or capacities above the predicament both our country and species find themselves in is your enemy (at best, a liability) and should be treated accordingly. If they’re a woman, you’re entitled to brush them aside; if they’re a man, you’re entitled to steamroll them.
If they scream that you’re evil or insist their circumstances are your fault, remember that their beef isn’t really with you, it’s with God; you’re just the closest approximation available for them to complain to. Their burden is struggling to bear the weight of their own lives and the pain that comes from comparing themselves to you. Your burden is struggling to bear the weight of both of your lives and the pain that comes from the fact they’ll never say thank you.2
And if your faith flickers in a moment of weakness as you endure the constant bombardment of waves of mediocrity, remember that no matter how sturdy they appear, every longhouse eventually goes up in flames. There are more than enough people that carry the fire, and on behalf of the Future Longhouse Arsonists of America Committee, we apologize for the delay in refining our collective ability to sufficiently bring the heat.
This Story Has Already Been Written
But burn it must and burn it will. Some flames simply can’t be extinguished. Comparisons to 1984 and Brave New World have been beaten to death for good reason, but I’ll add that our Regime also resembles the one in The Giver- aspiring toward a monochromatic world devoid of individuality in the eternal quest for Sameness. Rulers of a black-and-white world hate nothing more than people who were born to paint. They were born that way because that is what Nature wants us to do- to use our brief time on Earth to add to Creation, not to forsake that opportunity to partake in a lifeless simulacrum of it.
Which is why they can’t allow it. This is why central planners, technocrats, WEF types, etc. detest distinction more than anything else- beautiful colors that create distinction and can elicit awe cannot be accounted for in a world that runs on predictability. But it’s not just for efficiency's sake that they provide no exception for the exceptional- it’s because the world they deliberately manufactured to be devoid of color is still synthetic at the end of the day and organic appeal will always threaten to displace them.
No matter how much power they accrue, they can’t prevent the ending to this story. I’ve mentioned before how the eternal cross-cultural myth is that heroes always emerge just when all seems lost. Well, it’s not your imagination; the world is crumbling around you and people are desperately looking for people to save them. You’re living in the depressing epilogue of a fallen empire and the depressing prologue of what comes next. This is the way it works. You’ll enjoy the tonal shift in Chapter 1.
We may be living in a time of monsters, but nature has a way of balancing these things out through ancient channels well outside the reach of governments explicitly on the side of monsters. The chickens of this level of depravity and abuse will inevitably come home to roost; and given the way they’ve been treated, they tend to keep their talons sharpened for the day they meet the ones that hatched them.
While one may weep at the sheer amount of suffering from the ongoing project to crush the nation's spirits thus far, the fact is the ones behind it are simultaneously creating the necessary conditions for the emergence of what they fear the most. Every deliberately destructive policy that demoralizes 99.9% of the population just makes 0.1% angrier and more determined to do what must be done. It is yet another gift of nature that pressure turns some things to dust and others to diamond.
Demoralization serves many purposes, but fundamentally, it’s to destroy any awareness of the exceptional in those who possess it. While this has been quite effective; like all lies, its utility evaporates the moment people stop believing it. One of you kindly ask Substack to implement a bookmark feature, because I want the following tattooed onto your brain: Never, *ever* forget that the exceptional is, has always been, and will forever remain out of their reach.
Thoroughbreds of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your reins!
You will never be a real xylophone player. You have no rhythm, no tempo, no dexterity. Every compliment you get on your mallets is two-faced and half-hearted. Real musicians are repulsed by you.
Or possibly from being violently assaulted. Six in one hand, half-dozen in the other.
Thank you for this.
Zeus chained Prometheus to the Rock, and Zeus' Eagle pecks at Prometheus' ever-regenerating Liver. Obviously Prometheus is tortured by Zeus and His Eagle. Another dimension of this Myth is that Zeus is tortured by Prometheus. His Eagle pecks forever because it can never really 'get at,' or truly partake of, Prometheus' Liver. What Zeus REALLY wants remains forever beyond his reach, and He knows it.
In The Lathe of Heaven, Le Guin's antagonist stole the power to remake the world from its rightful, but passive owner. One of the first things he did was eliminate race and make everybody grey, but not everyone COULD be made grey, and so the hero's fiery black love interest was unable to exist. Since the power wasn't meant to be his, this progressive antihero eventually went mad and began to destroy the fabric of reality itself.