The Differentiated Man and Apoloteia

Author Offers Information About His Evolving Philosophy

Today I present quotes for contemplation from Julius Evola, a problematic but fascinating 20th century Italian philosopher and esotericist in whose works I’ve nonetheless managed to find quite a bit of wisdom. Despite elements of his thinking which don’t jibe with my view of humanity at all, his notion of the ‘aristocratic soul’ holds spiritual weight with my ways of thinking.

Evola’s historical condition appears also to make an excellent example of why ‘cancel culture’ is such a pernicious plague: In the course of philosophical studies, one must learn never to throw out the baby within the fetid bathwater of rhetoric often found in thinkers like Evola, born into a noble title and with a stratified view of humanity based on race, class and blood in which modern thinkers like your narrator today find only an ill-at-ease curiosity rather than genuine worth. I can entertain the most seemingly outlandish ideas without accepting them as gospel; I also know how to sort laundry and file things alphabetically. Such mental acuity should come, if not naturally, then with any truly worthwhile course of public education. Sad to say this is not the current case in our society.

Again: In order to tread the philosophical path, one must be able to entertain contradictory ideas in one’s head, even notions abhorrent, for such time as to determine, as best we may, the epistemological value of ideas as we may assign it to the various entries in our intellectual storehouse of information, beliefs and faith about the condition of humankind. Entertaining and examining the thinking of those with whom we may hold both disagreement and agreement does not equate endorsement of all their ideas; sorting wheat from chaff takes one’s full intellectual attention free of emotional prejudices and passions. To identify as troubling the absence of this crucial piece of functionality in many modern minds constitutes an understatement remarkable in its implications. 

To the aristocratic manner born, Baron Evola comes complete with monocle.

Whatever the shortcomings in Evola’s thinking, his detailed works on yoga, tantra, philosophy and magic have been not only influential on me, but in large part ‘affirmative of the path’ in the general character and quality of information presented. As readers of my upcoming memoir Shopkeep will learn, since early childhood I have often found myself in a state of ‘differentiation’ from many people in my life, my surroundings, and the more common ways of thinking and perceiving the world, and so passages like the below resonated with me like an enormous struck gong resonating into infinity.

From Ride the Tiger (translation by Joscelyn Godwin and Constance Fontana):

The truly detached man is not a professional and polemic outsider, nor conscientious objector, nor anarchist. Once it is established that life with its interactions does not constrain his being, he could even show the quality of a soldier who, in order to act and accomplish a task, does not request in advance a transcendent and quasi-theological assurance of the goodness of the cause. We can speak, in these cases, of a voluntary obligation that concerns the “persona,” not the being, by which—even while one is involved—one remains isolated.

One can keep in mind that for the differentiated man, having no interest in affirming and exposing himself in external life today, and his deeper life remaining invisible and out of reach, a communist system would not have the same fatal significance as for others; also an “underground front” could very well exist there. Taking sides in the present struggle for world hegemony is not a spiritual problem, but a banal, practical choice. 

The general situation characterized by Nietzsche remains: “The struggle for supremacy amidst conditions that are worth nothing: this civilization of great cities, newspapers, fever, uselessness.” Such is the framework that justifies the inner imperative of apoliteia: to defend the world of being and dignity of him who feels himself belonging to a different humanity and recognizes the desert around himself. 

The differentiated man cannot feel part of a “society” like the present one, which is formless and has sunk to the level of the purely material, economic, “physical” values, and moreover lives at this level and follows its insane course under the sign of the absurd. Therefore, apoliteia requires the most decided resistance to any social myth…

The differentiated man feels absolutely outside of society, he recognizes no moral claim which requires his inclusion in an absurd system; he can understand not only those who are outside, but even those who are against “society”—meaning against this society. Putting aside everything that does not directly concern him (because his way does not match that of his contemporaries), he would be the last to endorse efforts to normalize and rehabilitate within “society” those who have had enough of the game and are stigmatized as “unsuitable” and “asocial”—the anathema of “democratic” societies. The ultimate intention of such efforts is to narcotize those who can see through the absurd and nihilistic character of today’s collective life, behind all the “social” masks and the corresponding lay mythology. 

Such efforts obviously failed to take hold in this differentiated intellect. My intuition has always provided a steady guide as to what is and isn’t a worthwhile philosophy of life. I follow it still.

Once a less conditioned mind recognizes the mediocrity and absurdity of most social programs and activities in which we find ourselves mired, it is possible, perhaps even easy, to declare oneself sovereign and, indeed, ‘above it all’; for some of us, it has been a lifelong preparation for this moment.

This dude is next on my list to read.

As quoted by Evola, Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset offers this thought:

“The characteristic fact of the moment is that the mediocre soul, recognizing itself as mediocre, has the audacity to assert the rights of mediocrity and impose it everywhere.”

For the differentiated person like me, who has studied and researched and most of all, who lives in experience which formulates his worldview, rather than the world of symbol and rhetoric which the powerful use to entrain and hypnotize human minds, it is possible to adopt the notion not of ‘fighting for freedom,’ rather, simply embodying freedom in all ways of behavior and thinking.

An analogy: Even a car engine seems magical to those who don’t know the mechanics of how it operates, but if one possesses even basic knowledge of mental processes and how they are affected by external attempts at entrainment, the engine of one’s intellect can be repaired of its partisan afflictions and predilections to see a broader truth, a grander view of the cosmos and humanity’s place within it. Learn to recognize the mechanics of how rhetoric and symbol are used to influence minds, and you too may enjoy the opportunity to become a differentiated soul on the path of higher consciousness and experience—indeed, as a member of a caste of egalitarian spiritual aristocracy open and available to all. Welcome.