Of Image and Substance

Mark Twain is claimed to have said “image travels round the world twice before reality gets its shoes on”. For William Butler Yeats, it had more to do with the poetic persona as the mask a public figure must wear to communicate with large numbers of people. For those whose public dealings are limited to the few within their monkeysphere there really is not much need for a public persona, however in these days of mass communication and social networking image is no longer the reserve of the famous. We are our own little spin doctors and image consultants.

I find it quite appropriate that places singles go to meet other singles in hope of finding love are called “meat markets”. All ethical human relations are based on trading values. These may be monetary exchanges, exchanging favours, or advice, or simply companionship. The values exchanged can be emotional or material. The important part is the trade. When people are looking to meet someone in these settings, it’s like being in an outdoor market with everyone showing and shouting what they have to offer another person. We are all salesmen selling a product and the product that we are selling is brand us.

A friend shared an observation with me the other night. He noticed that if a pretty girl passes I suddenly start speaking more loudly about my work as a writer. I honestly never noticed I did that, but I see now it’s true. I do do that. That is me announcing the values I have on offer. I do this out of habit probably because my work is of value to me and it has always brought me buyers in the past.

According to the pick-up artists, I am presenting the wrong image. The goal is “cocky funny” as being the attitude, or image, that women find attractive. There has to be a balance. Too little cocky is boring and lacking self-confidence and too much is arrogance. As for funny, too little is boring and too much is the overbearing class clown. Cocky funny is more effective than a discourse on Aristotelian Ethics in creating arousal despite what you might read in an Ayn Rand novel.

Where I believe some pick-up artists get it wrong is that much of their advice leans towards creating a public image to sell the product, but like the snake oil salesman, he may get the punter’s money but there is no substance to the product so there are no return customers. So he has to keep moving from town to town and hope that no one recognises him. Only then can the snake oil salesman perpetuate his fraud.

Image is like the smell of fresh coffee or cinnamon buns. We are drawn by the smell and we enjoy the feelings it gives us, but we want that cup of coffee or the bun at the end of the journey. We not only want our desires to be fanned, we also want them satisfied. For this reason, image and substance go hand in hand. One is simply a reflection of the other. For the Victorians, this cultivated image was not just appearance, but more importantly reputation. A reputation could make or break a person’s prospects. As the saying goes, “Our reputation precedes us”.

I was recently made aware of someone who is quite vocal in her beliefs and calculated in her image, but her listeners found her strangely hollow. She was described as lacking passion. When the person’s history was recounted to me it became obvious that here was someone who had cultivated an image based on a particular ideology and had the ability to argue and even embody her position, but her life was one of complete contradiction. The word for such people is hypocrite; someone whose image is contrary to their substance.

What I am describing here is the relationship between image and substance as it pertains to people selling themselves in their social interactions. When we move up to more famous people another layer is added to the dynamic.

Consider the case of Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Tease. The story goes that their marriage ended because she wanted to be the Fifties housewife and he wanted to be the partying rock star. The Manson image/substance seems consistent but Dita’s seems contrary. Not true. Manson seems to have made a classic blunder. Female performers whose job is to convey an image of sexuality are not inherently nymphomaniacs. That is an image the male audience wants to believe, but that is all just part of the show. The sexy stripper flirting with a guy as she gives him a lap dance will go home to her boyfriend and complain about her sore feet.

But the same can be said of the rock star. I once met an aspiring metal singer whose band was considering touring. He complained that he would now have to grow his hair out again. The members of Metallica are all classically trained musicians, but you would not assume that from their fan base. Or think of Lord Byron, the poster boy for the Romantic. Mr Mad, Bad, and Dangerous-to- Know wrote, “Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves." One hardly thinks of the Byronic image as an advocate for Reason.

People are drawn to the popular image created by such celebrities and fill-in the blanks with the sort of person they want them to be for real. As Mr. Incredible said, “Of course I have a secret identity. I don't know a single superhero who doesn't. Who wants the pressure of being super all the time?”

The concepts of image, self-image, public persona, celebrity persona, and reputation are all facets of the same basic concept. These are ideas that we utilize, consume, and propagate on a daily basis, but like your mobile phone, you can probably work it but don’t really understand it.

Image is a form of communication. As with any communication, do you know what you have to say? Is it purposeful and thought out or haphazard? Are you going to tell the truth or lie? Will your audience understand you, misinterpret you, or be completely baffled?

Another thing about image is that it is always communicating. Even when a person says not a word they are speaking volumes to an observer, whether or not the audience is correctly interpreting the image or even if they are consciously aware it.

This is how image works. Regular readers are aware of my theory concerning the triune nature of reality. In that video link I wrote:

Objective Reality is supreme, but we can never truly know it.

We exist in Subjective Reality, but the map is not the terrain.

We depend on Artificial Reality, but it must be sustained by production.

There is a philosophical debate over what defines humanity. There are those who say that it is our ability to reason. Others say it is emotion, particularly sympathy and empathy. I once strongly advocated the former over the latter, but Adam Smith convinced me otherwise.

We live in the Objective Reality governed by Natural Law and fuelled by the engine of karma, the process of cause and effect. I sometimes call this The Great Machine with every moment in time, every event, and every human choice moving another piece forward and creating a new chain of events. We could not understand this process if we could not imagine the process.

Sympathy and empathy are also the result of imagination, as we imagine ourselves in another position or imagining how they feel. Of the four root emotions (happiness, sorrow, desire, and fear) two of them, desire and fear, are purely imaginative in nature.

What makes a human being unique is their ability to imagine and thus create the Subjective Reality of our perceptions. Our imaginations make us human. It is the source of all human invention and creation, and thus the source of the Artificial Reality as well.

The image that we communicate to others depends upon the perceptions of our audience and how they imagine us to be.

This brings me to my theory of Doppelgangers. Since the mind can never truly engage reality.  Every person, place, thing, or concept that we encounter is filtered through our perceptions and the mind creates a mental manifestation of it.  When we think about, talk about, or engage with that thing we do so with the mental image and not the thing itself.  Wisdom is the ability to align our idea of reality as closely and objectively as possible with reality.

When you first see or encounter someone, your mind begins to construct a mental doppelganger, or imaginative duplicate, of this person.  If a relationship forms, then that image gets fleshed-out.  Ideally, a perfect mental double is created.  All of your dealings with this person is not with the person but with your idea of the person.

If an intimate relationship or long-term partnership develops, the mind starts to form emotional attachments with the doppelganger.  Now, the doppelganger needs constant feedback from the real person to remain viable.  So the process is not independent.  However, we are always in love with our idea of a person and never with the real person.  That may seem harsh, but if we exist within the realm of our perception and can never truly know Objective Reality, then why would our romantic relationships be any different?

As with our relationship with reality, our mental constructs may be more true than false in some areas and more false than true in others.  The doppelganger may be accurate or it may be constructed of wishful thinking or emotional need.  As with life, the goal is to be wise.  We should use the facts of reality in our mental manufacturing process; likewise we must look at a person’s actions as objectively as possible in creating the doppelganger.

When the relationship ends, even though the person is gone, the doppelganger remains.  However, without the feedback from the real person the doppelganger begins to die.  This is incredibly painful because the doppelganger is made from you.  Your thoughts, your hopes, your desires, your emotions.  It may feel like you are dying inside, and that is because you are.

The human imagination is a powerful thing – and extremely dangerous. Of the three “realities”, the only one that is True Reality is Objective Reality.  Nonetheless, it is our ability to imagine Objective Reality in the form of Subjective Reality that allows us to form emotional connections with it and ultimately gives life meaning.

In his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats concludes with the famous line "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”. The reasoning behind this statement is that we live in a world of order governed by Natural Law which is the source of Truth, likewise Beauty is defined by order and symmetry. We can go a step further and say that by following the Natural Law then order and beauty will follow, which is Morality, or right action. So Truth, Beauty, and Righteousness are all aspects of the same central concept.

According to Objective Reality governed by Natural Law, Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth, however the picture changes in the context of Subjective Reality. Subjective Reality is based on an individual and collective perception and interpretation of Objective Reality and the feelings evoked. Since this is only an idea, then is does not really exist. Likewise, when we communicate these ideas to each other be they through conversations or through art, we are only communicating ideas, not necessarily reality.

Subjective Reality is governed by individual and collective feelings, learned responses, and social conditioning which may or may not have any connection to Natural law. To break these laws is to invite hurting people’s feelings and possibly invite their retribution.

Everything is relative without the standard provided by Natural Law and its principles. When everything is true; there is no Truth. When everything is beautiful; there is no Beauty. When any action is moral justified; there is no morality. When Subjective Reality is taken to its logical extreme we find that there is no Truth, no Beauty, and no Ethics.

John Keats was a child of the Romantic Era, the Age of Reason. Today, we live in what I call The Socialist Era, the Age of Feeling. I cover this in the article, Born in 1920. Where the culture of Keats was one focused primarily on Objective Reality and Natural Law, ours is one based on Subjective Reality and on Divine and Positive Law, in other words, whatever people feel is true, beautiful, or moral is valid regardless of any proven basis in reality.

To illustrate, with an Objective orientation the purpose of education and research is to understand Nature so that we can command Nature. But with a Subjective foundation the purpose of education and research is to attain social status and influence regardless of Natural Law. This places us on the path to destruction, or what I call Athena’s Wrath.

I touched on the concept of celebrity persona. When we see Christian Bale dressed-up like a giant bat and saying, “I’m Batman” we know that he’s lying. He’s Christian Bale. But we accept the lie because we recognise he is an actor pretending to be Batman for our entertainment. In the film Galaxy Quest, we laugh at the alien Thermians who thought American television programs were historical records. In real life, it would be just as foolish as the guy in the strip club thinking that the dancer was flirting with him because she fancied him. Most people have the power to discern a false image from a true one and will happily play along.

And yet when it comes to celebrities outwith playing a role, or musicians, or even politicians, people are quick to believe the false image concocted by their stylists and spin doctors. Why? Because they want to believe even though deep down they know it is a lie. They want their heroes and villains standing in the spotlight to love or despise. They want to believe in the substance they perceive to be communicated by these images.

There is a scene in the film Galaxy Quest where an actor, who plays a Captain Kirk-type hero on TV, is feeling irritable and slags off a fan by reminding him that it’s not real. The dejected kid says he knows this and slinks off. In the course of the film the fictional ship is built by aliens and the actor has to call on the fanboy for help. The actor tells the kid that it’s all real and the elated fan shouts, “I knew it”. We know that it is a lie but we desperately need it to be true.

The psychologist Nathaniel Brandon has an exercise were he asks people to stand in front of the group one by one and say convincingly, “I am worthy of existence”. Some are overly theatrical, some are shy, and others are monotone. He then asks the audience if they believe the person. Mostly, they don’t. His point is that most people don’t believe that they are worthy of existence. Most people want to be someone that they imagine to be more worthy.

We play out this exercise every day of our lives. The world is a meat market and we are all salesmen trying to convince the world that our goods, Brand Us, is worthy. Some people use gimmicks, some lie, some are overly theatrical, some shy, some sexy, some monotone, and some mundane. All this is conveyed through image – whether that image is consciously cultivated or not.

In the world of the Subjective we endeavour to make our audience feel good, regardless of Natural Law. This can bring fame, fortune, and recognition, but it all lacks substance. According to Branden, one of the keys to a positive self-image, which we then project through our communicated image, is the sense of efficacy. This means that we have done something to merit it by our actions in the Objective Reality of karma – cause/effect or action/consequence.

Edward Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew and applied his uncle’s theories in the field of sales and marketing. He even branched out into politics and political causes. Bernays was all about manipulating public opinion through human desires. Remember, desire is one of the imagined emotions. In other words, he was using image to sell products and concepts. Why? Because people respond to the feelings invoked through the imagination more than facts. This is how image travels round the world twice before reality gets its shoes on. This same principle is taught by the pick-up artist gurus. The lesson is how to create an image to manipulate female emotions in your favour.

Now perhaps the products sold by the Mad Men are superior to their competition. Perhaps the guy manipulating the girl really is a great guy for her. Regardless, the image is meaningless without the substance to back it up. Without substance the product and the relationship will eventually fail.

One of the key principles of the Romantic is to live consciously. This is because the Romantic emphasises the self and free will, but free will is meaningless if we choose not to consciously exercise it. This means taking conscious control of your image.

Through a combination of attitude, dress, and physical and verbal communication you are conveying an image. You may have a celebrity persona and also a public persona and a private persona, but each of these must convey Truth. The substance behind the image is you.

The Assassin’s Creed – Nothing is true; everything is permitted

Where other men blindly follow the truth,
Remember, nothing is true
Where other men are limited by morality or law,
Remember, everything is permitted.
We work in the dark to serve the light.
We are assassins.

I like criticism. Now there is a lost art. The role of the critic is to examine a piece of creation or a social phenomenon, or even a political phenomenon, and put it into a philosophical context that both the consumer/s and the creator/s may have missed. Unfortunately, the role of critic in society has devolved into two types. The academic critic is driven by ideology and the pop critic, with his thumbs up or down reviews, is usually driven by the market. The best place for reading proper old-fashioned criticism is the internet. I have written several and many folks have written some brilliant pieces.  The keen eye of the critic is most often active in the arts of painting, literature, and cinema. I know it is foolish to ever claim to be the first, but I know of no one who has ever written a proper criticism of a video game. I wonder why not. The best games have story and characters so why not unpeel the layers to reveal the hidden messages?

The frame story of the Assassin’s Creed series is actually pretty weak. The idea is that a secret society has created a machine called the Animus that allows a person to tap into the genetic memories of their ancestors. A bartender named Desmond Miles is kidnapped by this secret society, The Knights Templar no less, because they seek information known only to his ancestors, and Desmond must relive the memories of his ancestors to find the answers. In Assassin’s Creed 1, the ancestor is Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad (born 1165) a member of The Assassins, or Hashishin, during the Third Crusade. In Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood the ancestor is Ezio Auditore da Firenze (born 1459) a Florentine noble during the Italian Renaissance.  The world of Assassin’s Creed is one where two secret societies are locked in a nearly thousand year struggle for the soul of mankind. The Animus provides the narrative means of linking the past and the present to give the player a much larger picture of historical events in relation to the present.

There was a time when the Knights Templar were of little interest outside historians, but today they have become the foundation of the conspiracy theorist’s grand narrative. Their history in brief is that the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, commonly known as the Knights Templar, were a religious order formed circa 1129 who fought during the Crusades as the elite troops of Christendom. To fund their activities in the Holy Land the Knights Templar had to be able to move money from the West to the Middle-East quickly and so invented the foundations of the banking system. They not only moved wealth to the Holy Land, but also from it and thus became very rich. King Philip IV of France was in debt to the Templars, so he pressured Pope Clement V to disband the Order in 1312 and, Jacque de Molay, the Templar Grand Master, was burned at the stake and the Templars disappear from history.

The conspiracy theory goes that the Templars, though disbanded by papal decree, continued to operate behind the scenes ever since as the secret money men controlling the strings of puppet governments. Their modern decedents are the cabal of international bankers and multi-national corporations moving us towards a one world government – The New World Order. This seems to be the premise accepted in the Assassin’s Creed games.

The only opposition to the Templars in the game are the Assassins. Historically, the Assassins active during the Crusades were an order of Nizari Ismailis, part of the Shia branch of Islam, which existed from 1092 to 1265 under the leadership of the Persian Hassan-i Sabbah. The name assassin comes from the Arabic hashishin, or “users of hashish” but also carries the connotation of “outcast” or “rabble”. Sabbah’s followers were known for their athletic prowess, intelligence, and ability to blend in. Their targets were exclusively politicians and generals and during the Crusades they were known to take contracts on Crusaders and Saracens alike, whichever suited the guild’s purposes. In 1257, the Mongol warlord Hülegü destroyed Alamut, the Assassin’s mountain headquarters in northwestern Iran, including their library, so not much is known of their beliefs. Then in 1265 their strongholds in Syria fell to Baybars, the Mamluk sultan, and that was the end.

Just as conspiracy theorists postulate that the Knights Templar survived their reported demise to become the secret ruling elite, the game Assassin’s Creed resurrects the Assassins in the mold of the plucky outcasts murdering key figures to disrupt the machinations of the Templars to enslave mankind.

Now let’s take a step back from the game for a moment and look at the larger game. There is a hierarchy to the world. In every human society, no matter their claims to egalitarianism, there have been people at the top, people at the bottom, and people in-between. The gauge for determining a person’s place is power. Power is the means by which we work our will in the world. People of great power command wealth, some control armies, and some control both. This can be on a global, national, or local scale, but the principles are the same. The people at the bottom have limited power, so they learn to submit.

We acknowledge that all people have the Natural Rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness and any violation of these rights is immoral and grounds for moral retribution. This puts a check on the power of the powerful. Through the instrument of law the weak are protected from the abuses of the mighty.  But what if the law favours the powerful over the weak? What happens when the phrase becomes, “and freedom and justice for all who can afford it”? What if the very laws themselves serve the interests of the people of power and not the people?

We may read Assassin’s Creed as being subversive in that it complements the narrative given by the conspiracy theorists, particularly in these dark days when it seems that their predictions are coming to pass. Or we may view it as a metaphor. The Templars represent the powers-that-be seeking to control people and the Assassins are those willing to fight such controls, not only for themselves but for all people. These people who “work in the dark to serve the light”.

Consider this fictitious scenario. Police raid a home or place of business without announcing themselves. Perhaps they have a warrant; perhaps they do not. Either way, that is not announced upon their arrival. The occupants respond to the armed intrusion with gunfire and some of the officers are killed during the arrests. Should those who killed the policemen be accountable for murder?


I believe that the vast majority of people would say yes. We are taught through our social conditioning to obey the police and that murder is wrong. However, in a liberal society based on individual rights, the answer would be no. Such an invasion would be a violation of property rights unless the police have a search warrant issued by a judge who determines if there is reasonable cause for such an action. So regardless of the fact that these invaders are wearing uniforms, without a warrant they are, under the law, intruders, and the occupiers have the right to defend their property using reasonable force.

If we reject this interpretation, then what we are saying is that the State, meaning the people of power, can use force against the people as they choose and it is illegal for the people to oppose them. We have taken power from the law and put it in the gun. Of course the people of power have more guns, so those who choose to fight back must use force with surgical precision, meaning assassinations.

However, although I can make a moral argument for using assassination as a political tool, when we look through history we find that the most famous assassinations were not performed in the advance of liberty, but by either the insane, by the men of power themselves, or by the few acting in personal interest in the name of the people. The only exception that comes to mind is the assassination of Julius Cesar and perhaps John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. “Sic semper tyrannis”, or “thus always to tyrants” Booth shouted from the stage. In order to preserve the Union, Lincoln acted against the prescribed powers in the Constitution and impeachment was not an option given Lincoln’s popularity after the war. So though Booth may have been wrong, a case can be made that he acted morally.

The Assassinations

The game Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is broken-up into segments with the core chapters concerned with three primary assassinations. The first is a corrupt cardinal and banker who flaunts his hedonistic lifestyle, the second is an effete French general who believes his value stems from his birth status and not his actions, and the third is a rival assassin (the Murderer) whom Ezio spares.

With each victim we have their final words and Ezios admonitions:

To the Banker:
Juan: The things I have felt, seen and tasted. I do not regret a moment of it.
Ezio: A man of power must be contemptuous of delicacies.
Juan: But...I gave the people what they wanted.
Ezio: And now you pay for it. Il piacere immeritato si consuma da sé (Pleasure unearned consumes itself). Requiescat in Pace (Rest in Peace).

To the General:
Octavian: I only wanted respect.
Ezio: Respect is earned, not inherited or purchased.
Octavian: Perhaps you are right... I need more time...
Ezio: Che tu sia parte nella morte (May you be equal in death). Requiescat in Pace (Rest in Peace).

To the Murderer:
Micheletto: I am not yet dead.
Ezio: I did not come here to kill you. He who is the cause of someone else becoming powerful is the agent of his own destruction.

In the additional story available as downloadable content, The Da Vinci Disappearance, Ezio kills the leader of cult that wants to use a hidden Pythagorean code make people more enlightened.
Ercole: You... an Assassin... the enemy of knowledge?
Ezio: One must choose to search for truth. Forcing it on others accomplishes little.
Ercole: These lost people... warring kingdoms... I would have ended their suffering.
Ezio: Che tu possa conoscere la verità nella morte. (May you know the truth in death.) Requiescat in pace. (Rest in peace.)

Each of these characters is symbolic of power in our society. The Cardinal/Banker represents pleasure. However it is not as simple as that. Why are people religious? It makes them feel good. Why do they consume? It makes them feel good. Why do they rack up consumer debt with the banks? To pay for feeling good. To all this Ezio says, “Pleasure unearned consumes itself”. All of these pleasures are of value, but they must be earned. The pleasures of faith through deeds, the pleasure of consumption through work, and such honest thrift saves us from the banker’s debts.

I find it interesting that morality here is equated with hedonism when it takes the form of self-righteousness. It is so obvious, but rarely articulated. The image of the Cardinal/Banker seems perfect to express the do-gooders supporting the power of the state to satisfy their own self-importance all in the name of righteousness.

The French general represents those born into power. From my association with the wealthy, I have found that the men who earned their wealth are good, if not great, men. However, their children are another matter. Often they have an innate sense of entitlement which is unearned and they grow to command others as their fathers had. Some are capable and others are not. To them Ezio reminds them that “Respect is earned, not inherited or purchased”.

The Murderer represents those among the people who serve as the fist of those in power. Ezio’s admonition, “He who is the cause of someone else becoming powerful is the agent of his own destruction”, reminds me of the socialist protestors who are in essence demanding a more powerful central government. They are the agents of their own future oppression.

Finally, the cult leader represents academic power and the self-proclaimed intellectual elite. Have you ever noticed that people think that everyone else is an idiot but them? Those that I might consider stupid proclaim that the world is full of idiots and apparently they are the exception. How more so must this be among the educated? These are the people who tell others how they should live if they are to be as intelligent as they are and they seek to accomplish this through the force of government in the form of laws. To this Ezio says, “One must choose to search for truth. Forcing it on others accomplishes little”.

You may have noticed someone missing from the list. The games primary antagonist and final kill. This is Cesare Borgia and he represents political power. He is the overreaching force that controls the Cardinal/Banker, the General, and the Murderer. His end comes when he is defeated by Ezio but proclaims that no man can kill him. Ezio answers that fate will decide and throws him from the castle walls. The message here is that government by its very nature will spawn new Cesare Borgias and we must remain constantly vigilant for their return.

The Assassin’s Creed

But what of the Assassin’s Creed?

“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”. There are three sources for this. The first is the 1938 novel ‘Alamut’ by the Slovene writer Vladimir Bartol which was the basis/inspiration for the first Assassin’s Creed game. Strangely, the novel was not translated into English until 2004. The game itself appeared three years later. The next source is a quote mistakenly attributed to the 1880 novel ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "If God doesn't exist, everything is permitted". The exact phrase, “Nothing is true, Everything is permitted” appeared that same year as “Nichts ist wahr, Alles ist erlaubt”, in ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ by Friedrich Nietzsche.

In philosophy, the branch known as Ethics concerns itself with human activities. Those actions with a positive outcome are good and those with a negative outcome are bad. It is impossible to determine right action from wrong action without considering the context. That is where the first two branches come in, Metaphysics (what is reality?) and Epistemology (what is knowledge?). Together, these two branches pose the ultimate question in all of philosophy, “What is Truth?” If there is no Truth, then there are no moral limitations to action and thus is every action permitted.

Now take a moment to consider what you believe to be true. Is God in His heaven? Is global warming threatening life on planet Earth? Would the world be a better place is wealth was equally distributed? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then can you prove any of it or do you just feel that it is true because everyone else says it is?

In his day, Nietzsche was questioning the commonly accepted truths of the Judeo-Christian belief system. Today, we might expand that to include all socially conditioned beliefs that people accept without question. What if none of it was true? What if nothing is true? How would that affect your actions? There would then be no limitations to your will to act, or as Nietzsche famous said, “the will to power”. What he is really addressing here is what modern psychology and self-help call “limiting beliefs”. These are ideas about the nature of reality (truth) that limit our ability to act productively for our own benefit.

To say, “Nothing is true” is not a denial of Objective Reality. It is a denial of Subjective Reality and its power over our ability to engage our free will to act. This is not only important to humanity in general but particularly to the Romantic, since individualism is built upon volition and fettered volition is not true freedom at all but a form of slavery.

When I discovered the idea of the triune nature of reality: Objective, Subjective, and Artificial, I felt incredibly empowered by this idea. Ultimately, what it says is that nothing is true except Objective Reality, but there is more to it.

As we see in Ezio’s admonitions, and as his character as it develops throughout the games, he is constantly preaching a believe system. So we cannot say that “nothing is true”. However, these beliefs he espouses can all be traced by to the idea of Natural Law derived from Objective Reality.

One of the central characters in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is the historical figure Niccolo Machiavelli, who the writers of the game recast as a member of the Assassins. The following is from a scene involving Machiavelli and Ezio Auditore in Rome.

Ezio: Look at this city, the center of Borgia and Templar rule. Killing one man will not change things. We need to take away the source of their power.
Machiavelli: Are you suggesting we appeal to the people?
Ezio: Maybe.
Machiavelli: Relying on the people is like building on the sand.
Ezio: You are wrong. Our belief in humanity rests at the heart of the Assassin Brotherhood.

What Machiavelli is suggesting here is that the people cannot be trusted to do the right thing implying that they are fickle and will pursue short term gain or pleasure rather than long-term happiness and stability. We might go so far as to say that people are ignorant or stupid and therefore incapable of doing the right thing. A religious person might simply say that people are sinful. In all of these scenarios, the conclusion is the same. The people must be controlled, led, coerced, regulated, or nudged to do the right thing. Right being determined by someone else’s idea of truth and imposed by force on others for the good of society.

I think the majority of people would agree with Machiavelli here, but Ezio’s reply taken in conjunction with the Assassin’s Creed says different. He may be suggesting the idea of spontaneous order, or the invisible hand.

Objective Truth relies on Natural Law. There is a Sanscrit word that does not exist in its pure meaning in English; the word is Karma. It denotes the reality of Cause and Effect that lies at the heart of Natural Law and creates the spontaneous order found in Nature and in society.

Consider this scenario. You should not hit people. Why? Because they might hit you back. That is Natural Law. You avoid pain by not causing pain to others. Now suppose that you are socially conditioned not to hit people because it’s not nice, or God says so, or any other Subjective line of reasoning. You are now at the mercy of those who do not share your social conditioning. They can be violent without any fear of reprisal. They can now act without consequence and so disrupt the Natural order.

I confess that I too agree with Machiavelli, that the people cannot be trusted. However, I believe that is because they live a life where they have be sheltered or protected from the consequences of their actions, and therefore never learned how to be better -- to live up to their own potential.  The solution is not to impose rules based on Subjective Reality, but to allow Nature to take its course. This teaches responsibility and self-control through experience. Positive actions bring positive results and negative actions bring negative results.

For example, an article from Scientific America (April 2011) entitled ‘How Self-Control Works’ by Dan Ariely demonstrates the importance of self-control.

A recent study by colleagues of mine at Duke demonstrates very convincingly the role that self control plays not only in better cognitive and social outcomes in adolescence, but also in many other factors and into adulthood. In this study, the researchers followed 1,000 children for 30 years, examining the effect of early self-control on health, wealth and public safety. Controlling for socioeconomic status and IQ, they show that individuals with lower self-control experienced negative outcomes in all three areas, with greater rates of health issues like sexually transmitted infections, substance dependence, financial problems including poor credit and lack of savings, single-parent child-rearing, and even crime.

A quality like self-control is proven objectively to bring happiness, so it is up to parents to encourage this process of delayed gratification in children until they learn to do it for themselves, otherwise it is up to them to learn it on their own through experiences and hardships. The problem is that some people never learn from their mistakes and so as parents they never teach it to their children.

GK Chesterton said, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." In other words, belief in nothing creates a vacuum without any sort of standard and all that remains is the post-modern idea of relativistic Truth. So in rejecting Subjective truth we must accept the lessons found in Objective Truth to avoid the vacuum.

Conclusion

In 1987, I studied the book, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch Jr.. Wikipedia defines cultural literacy as:

Cultural literacy is the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions, and informal content that creates and constitutes a dominant culture. From being familiar with street signs to knowing historical references to understanding the most recent slang, literacy demands interaction with the culture and reflection of it. Knowledge of a canonical set of literature is not sufficient in and of itself when engaging with others in a society, as life is interwoven with art, expression, history, and experience. Cultural literacy requires familiarity with a broad range of trivia and implies the use of that trivia in the creation of a communal language and collective knowledge. Cultural literacy stresses the knowledge of those pieces of information that content creators will assume the audience already possesses.

People can play a game series like Assassin’s Creed and take little from it aside from the combat, challenges, and quests. That’s fine. However for the culturally literate there is so much more to see. That is the role of the critic. He points these things out.

As a Romantic, I recognise the deeper ideology as being more than the “assassin’s creed”. It is also the Romantic's Creed. It is not surprising that Machiavelli appears in the game as a secret leader of the assassins. He is part of the Romantic philosophical canon, and his works influenced others in the canon like Rousseau, Francis Bacon, John Milton, Adam Smith, John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.

Blair Worden wrote in "Milton's Republicanism and the Tyanny of Heaven":

In the seventeenth century it was in England that Machiavelli's ideas were most substantially developed and adapted, and that republicanism came once more to life; and out of seventeenth-century English republicanism there were to emerge in the next century not only a theme of English political and historical reflection - of the writings of the Bolingbroke circle and of Gibbon and of early parliamentary radicals - but a stimulus to the Enlightenment in Scotland, on the Continent, and in America.

There is a clever scene towards the end of Brotherhood where Ezio and Machiavelli part company. Machiavelli says, “I intend to write a book about you one day”. Ezio responds, “If you do, make it short”. This is no doubt a reference to Machiavelli’s most well-known work, ‘The Prince.’

I like the idea that the assassins are “outcast” but through their nobility of spirit and their character, as embodied in Ezio, they become princes. I will note that ‘The Prince ‘itself has little bearing on Ezio or the assassins.

For those with the culturally literacy to see it, Assassin’s Creed is more than just a game. It is a call to arms encouraging us to remove the shackles of our social conditioning by recognising that “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” and thus have the strength of will and character to challenge the oppressions of our age.

Imagining Libertarians

Edward Crane, the founder of the libertarian think tank The Cato Institute, wrote of the 1972 Libertarian National Convention held at the Radisson Hotel in San Francisco:

"As a libertarian I was always aware that it was appropriate to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles. But until I walked into that room, I had no idea just how many alternatives there were. There were anarchists dressed in all black. There were Randians holding long, gold cigarette holders. And hippies from the left and conservatives from the far right. I think the only other person there with a suit was Ed Clark, who later ran for president on the Libertarian ticket."

I thought of this over drinks the other day when I complained to a friend that I feel my ambitions are thwarted due to a lack of human material. My vision for many years was the creation of an organisation dedicated to my principles. I call it my Church of the Romantic in jest, but in practice I call it my Salon de Mal, a place where Romantic thinkers, artists, activists, and lifestylers could gather to educate and support each other and further promote the Romantic ideals and values.

Here is the problem. The thinkers I want are into academia. The artists are into aesthetics. The activists follow mainstream politics. The lifestylers are transient souls consuming superficial pop-culture; they are still growing-up and will statistically grow out of what I am offering. I may succeed in collecting the young and the idealistic educated poor (like myself), but what I need are powerful adults, but many are already invested in jobs, families, and perhaps even the status quo. What I want to is unite the strands of philosophy (Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics) in society into a holistic organisation.

This is where my friend pointed out that libertarians lack an aesthetic. There is no cool and recognisable image. In my mind there is, but he was right. There is not one evident in the mainstream.

I once overheard an American student speaking to some Scots in a club who were about her same age. She said, “Do I look like a Republican?” I’d wager we could ascribe an image or stereotype to fit most ideological points of view, but somehow the libertarians fall through the cracks and are often mistaken for Republicans or Torries.

This is when I thought of Ed Crane’s observation. “There were anarchists dressed in all black. There were Randians holding long, gold cigarette holders.” For me, libertarians are Moderns. I’ll explain.

I’ve written before my theory that the Romantic Era ended in 1929 and the Socialist Era began. Other authors use different terms. What I call the Romantic Era is called the Victorian Age, The Enlightenment/Industrial Age, or simply the Modern Age by philosophers such as Jean-François Lyotard, who coined the term Postmodernity. What came after was called The Postmodern, or the state of Postmodernity.

So the postmodern is not defined by what it is but by what came before it. It is the period after the Modern. Lyotard suggested that the “Grand Narrative” collapsed leaving a void to be filled. The old truths that people believed in ceased to have the power to cement and motivate society. So the Modern is characterized by relatively homogenous nation-states with an established hierarchy and national will, but more importantly it believed in an absolute, knowable, and objective Truth.  Postmodern is not.

Postmodernity is the state where you may have more in common with your friend on the internet living 6,000 miles away than you do with your neighbours. It is the state where you might encounter dozens of different ideologies, from sexual orientation, to religious or cultural beliefs, to political beliefs all before lunch and none of them is more “right” than another. It’s a world where truth is not objective but subjective. If that is so, then so is right and wrong. Whatever feels good is right. This is what I call The Age of Feeling.

So within this diverse stew we have representatives of different cultures, zeitgeists, beliefs, and so on. These can be placed into three primary groups: the Pre-moderns, the Moderns, and the Postmoderns.

The Pre-moderns are the hippies, neo-pagans, neo-tribalists, eco warriors, New Agers, feminists, and so forth. You get the picture. The subjectivication of truth has served them well and they have thrived. This is mostly due to the fact that in the wealthy West they have the luxury of playing primitive without all the negative consequences of a true primitive lifestyle. Or to put it this way, they will pay a fortune for traditional Indian remedies while the people of India are in desperate need for Western medicine that actually works. The Pre-moderns are the prime movers of the Age of Feeling and the bastion of the Left.

The Moderns are the bad guys. We are the pro-industry, pro-technology, pro-science, pro-reason, pro-capitalism, pro-nationalism, pro-gender roles, and pro-Christian. Most social conservatives would fit this category, but so would the libertarians who are socially liberal. If that seems odd, remember that both were represented during the Modern Age as conservatives and liberals; the common thread is their desire to return to the Age of Reason. Given the current state of postmodernity, they have more in common than not despite core differences.

Finally, we have the Postmoderns. One book I read ages ago on the subject divided these guys into two categories: the Nihilists and the Players. “If everything is true, then nothing is true” says the Nihilist. The flip side is the Player who just loves it all. He jumps from one fad or ideology to the next. The only downside is when there is nothing new on the horizon. I suppose the author who coined the term may have had the sexual player in mind. He doesn’t care about substance or deeper meaning as long as he gets pleasure from it. When he’s finished, then he will happily move on. What they have in common, the Nihilist and the Player, is the belief that nothing has meaning.

So for me, the image of the libertarian draws from its political roots in Classical Liberalism of the Nineteenth Century and therefore the Romantics of the Modern Era. This seems perfectly embodied in Crane’s description of the followers of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism with their cigarette holders at the Libertarian National Convention. It is classy, charming, and perhaps a bit elitist and anachronistic.

In my dream world, frock coats, waistcoats, and corsetry would be associated with libertarianism just as tie-dye shirts and beads are associated with hippies and the Left. I would love someone to see my style of dress and assume me to be a libertarian because I am dressed as a Modern rather than as a Player who is into “the cowboy”, “Goth” or “Steampunk” look. And while the hippies gather in the woods to sing folk songs, the libertarians are in some elegant café discussing issues.
 

Of course this is just a dream. In real life, if I were to see someone so dramatically and Romantically dressed, then I can only assume them to be a Player without the ideological core that I am looking for in a partner for my salon. Perhaps they are off to a club theme night. I have developed this belief through countless dead-ends and disappointments. Meanwhile, the true image of the libertarian is the somewhat intellectual and geeky guy at his computer. I guess that fits me too.

Yes, libertarians are in desperate need of a make-over from the mad men. Should this ever occur, I can’t imagine my phone ringing. From my experience, I suppose it will one day happen and the final result will be something I heartily disapprove.

My objective through my work has been to take those existing subcultural groups within Postmerdernity whose Aesthetic roots lie in the Modern, such as the Goths, Dandies, Steampunks, and Burlesques and reconnect them with their philosophical roots to form a recognisable alternative lifestyle or counter-culture called Romantic.  In this, I have failed completely.  You can lead a Player to Truth, but you can't make him think.

The Modern Hero

A friend sent me this quote from the book, ‘King, Warrior, Magician, Lover : Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine’ by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

"Ours is not an age that wants heroes. Ours is an age of envy, in which laziness and self-involvement are the rule. Anyone who tries to shine, who dares to stand above the crowd, is dragged back down by his lackluster and self-appointed 'peers.'

 "We need a great rebirth of the heroic in our world. Every sector of human society, wherever that may be on the planet, seems to be slipping into an unconscious chaos. Only the heroic consciousness, exerting all its might, will be able to stop this slide toward oblivion. Only a massive rebirth of courage in both men and women will rescue the world. Against enormous odds, the Hero picks up his sword and charges into the heart of the abyss, into the mouth of the dragon, into the castle under the power of an evil spell."

It sounds great and inspiring, and I totally agree, but these days can we tell the difference between the hero and the anti-villain? For those not aware of the concept of the anti-villain, he is someone with all the attributes of the hero, as described above, but he is willing to commit acts contrary to accepted social morality in order to achieve a higher purpose.

In fiction, we have anti-villains like Magneto from the X-men who believes the oppressed mutants must fight back against humanity in order to survive; Ra’s al Ghul in ‘Batman Begin’ believes crime must be stopped by destroying those who engage in criminal behaviour as well as those who support criminal activity through action or inaction.

In life, we have the recent events in Wisconsin where the heroic teachers stood up against the state legislature to fight for their rights to collective bargaining for state employees. But wait a second. Collective bargaining is where union representatives have the power to negotiate terms that affect all members of the union and said negotiations are conducted between union representatives and representatives of the state legislature. Since the unions are major contributors to political parties, particularly the Democratic Party, could this not be seen as a conflict of interest? The state representatives are state representative because of money and votes provided by the very union representatives with whom they are negotiating. Furthermore, the benefits the unions are arguing for are come from the state treasury, that is, taxpayer’s money. So in truth, what the heroic teachers are fighting for is money and benefits at the taxpayers’ expense agreed upon under dubious circumstances. So are they heroes or anti-villains?

If you are a mutant, then Magneto is a hero. If you hate crime, then Ra’s al Ghul is a hero. If you are a teacher, then the teacher’s union is heroic. Propagandists, PR men, and spin doctors can contrive any group and their leaders into heroes.

The true test is a question of Ethics. Is right action determined by the real or projected special interests of a particular group or by a standard law of conduct?

Here’s an example of what I mean by a “projected” special interest. In Britain, a group wanted to ban the story of the Three Little Pigs from schools on the grounds that it was offensive to Muslims. Turns out, no one in this group were Muslim and the representatives from the Muslim community spoke out saying that they are not offended by stories about pig, they just don’t eat them. This group projected what they imagined a segment of the population might find offensive and on these grounds sought to use political force to prevent it. Is that moral?

Here is my moral code in brief. Ethics is simply defined as right action. What actions will promote greater happiness and flourishing? The fundamental answer is the recognition and respect of the Natural Rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness for each individual. These rights can only be morally infringed in defence of your rights and/or as punishment for their violation. To make it even more brief, “Live and let live”.

Sure, it reads simple and I reckon most people would agree with this in principle. The problem comes in the execution. That’s when all the deeper implications emerge and the true test of character begins. I say character because people will do things that you do not like and you have to suck-it up and accept it. People will suffer for their bad decisions, but those were their decisions to make and their consequences to suffer. Sometimes people will contrive that they have a claim on another person’s life, liberty, or property and claim a moral duty to secure it for themselves.

Get this bit of horror. The racist has a right to be a racist, though he is in violation should he choose to infringe upon another’s rights. The obese person has the right to be obese. The rich man has the right to be rich. The junkie has the right to destroy himself. The carnivore has the right to eat meat. The homosexual has the right to be gay. In other words, people have a right to say and do things that we disapprove of or find to be morally wrong – provided that they do not infringe the Natural Rights of others. Now that takes character.

So what makes a hero? A hero fights for these rights against the murderers, slavers, thieves, fraudsters, and tyrants (both large and small). The villain strives for his own interests regardless of the Natural Rights of others, but the anti-villain is not selfish. He fights for the interests of his special interest group, but he too acts regardless of the Natural Rights of others. What defines the hero is his defending of the principles of these rights as higher ideals regardless of the individuals involved or his own personal judgements of them.

Natural Rights are also called Negative Rights. No, not because they’re not positive, but because they say what people and governments cannot morally do. They cannot violate your rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. The flip-side is Positive Rights. These are not so much rights as privileges, sometimes called goods. They say what people and government “should” do, such as a right to an education, health care, housing, a job, or whatever can be contrived. PJ O’Rourke calls the Positive Rights “Gimme” Rights and the Negative Rights “Go Away” rights.  I would argue that the Natural Rights form the basis of morality, whereas the qualities expressed by Positive Rights, such as personal altruism or beneficence, are morally praiseworthy but are not morally obligatory.

Many problems stem from the Gimme rights. In order to give services they must first be paid for. They are paid for through taxes which are collected under force or the threat of force. In other words, the Gimme rights are only possible by violating the Go Away rights. Gimme Rights are usually for a specific group’s benefit and not to everyone’s. Should the threat emerge that the Gimme rights might be lessened or taken away, then the anti-villains wrap themselves in the hero’s mantle, take to the streets, and fight the just cause of using government force to steal from others to benefit their group’s interests. Also, the Gimme Rights allow for larger government, this means more government jobs, more bureaucrats, and larger expense accounts.

In a proper Republican form of government the elected officials understand that the purpose of government, and therefore their purpose in government, is to protect the Natural Rights of their electorate. So every official action, law, or regulation is accepted or rejected according to this guiding star. In a Democracy, its majority rule regardless of the Natural Rights. 

However, the current state of play is this. Special interest groups, be they corporate or unions or action groups, fund political parties or candidates who use that money to influence voters. Once elected, the representatives pass legislation as they see fit, but their guiding star is how to fund the next election. This is not a Republic and it isn’t even a Democracy where the issues would be presented to an informed public for a vote with account books laid bare. It’s more of an oligarchy where the representatives of special interest groups form a shadow government alongside elected representatives. As a consequence its all about the Gimme without much Go Away.

Over the past month, both versions of the film ‘Inherit the Wind’ have been on the television and I watched them both. The story is based on the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 in which a high school biology teacher was accused of violating a state law banning the teaching of evolution.   ‘Inherit the Wind’ shows two “heroes” clashing in the courtroom. Henry Drummond is the defender of Natural Law (the law of Reality) and Matthew Harrison Brady is the defender of Divine Law (the law of God) under the auspices of Positive Law (the law of Society ) as seen through the court, the audience at the trial, and the law itself. 

The true hero of course is Drummond who is defending free thinking, free speech, and of course Natural Rights. Brady is the anti-villain who is trying to preserve faith and fight the good moral fight, at the expense of Natural Rights, for the greater good. In the end we see him collapse under the weight of his own self-importance, emotionalism, and personal sense of moral rectitude. As for Positive Law, unlike the primary positions, it has no fixed position and wavers on the whim of the crowd and the greater public opinion beyond the courtroom.

The world is full of men like Brady who are full of moral zeal and righteousness who believe that the magnitude of their beliefs justifies violating the Natural Rights of those who have done no wrong save questioning, challenging, or even mocking the beliefs into which their opposition has invested so much of their emotions and their identity.

Ever since 1945 the name of Hitler is evoked to represent evil. As Godwin’s Law states, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." The thing that people conveniently forget about Hitler is that in his mind he was fighting the heroic moral battle for the souls of the German people and the German people loved him for it. After all, the evil Jewish bankers had to be stopped because they were corrupting Germany. In dire times like these, we are justified in violating a person’s Natural Rights for the preservation of the nation. Right? Wrong.

The thing about the Antichrist is that no one recognises him as such. They think he is the Christ. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (Matthew 24:24, King James Version). We recognise the false Christ because he is willing to violate the Natural Rights of others with moral justifications. The only true moral justification is in defence of your rights or as punishment for violating rights; all crimes are punished by violating the rights of the convicted, either through death, incarceration, fines, or banishment and each penalty corresponds to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. 

So how do we fight the villains and the anti-villains of the world? We do not initiate violence, but once begun we can morally finish it. We talk. We argue. We debate. We thwart. We challenge. We stand firm. Most of all, we do not advocate the violation of an individual’s Natural Rights either directly or through endorsing government force on our behalf. We live and we let live. 

I was ready to close this up with that, but I just realised that I have discussed the hero, the villain, and the anti-villain, but not the anti-hero.  So I shall close with two quotes for you to ponder.

“Rorschach's Journal. October 12th, 1985: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll whisper "no."  -- The Watchmen

“I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you.” –Batman in Batman Begins

The 7 Romantic Virtues: Enterprise/Self-Reliance

It has been a while since I have added to my collection of articles on the 7 Romantic Virtues, so before I proceed, here is a quick recap.

The 7 Virtues are listed below.  Some are paired as being predominately masculine or feminine.  This does not mean for example that a woman cannot cultivate enterprise or a man cannot or should not cultivate self-reliance.  Simply that one is primarily masculine and the other is in the secondary position, and vice-versa.

 
Since creating this list, I have also listed the vices that correspond on the right.

1.    Wisdom                                   Foolishness
2.    Pride (self-confidence)            Arrogance
3.    Magnanimity                           Selfishness
4.    Passion/Sensuality                  Sentimentality/Vulgarity
5.    Enterprise/Self-reliance         Cynicism/Co-dependency
6.    Chivalry/Grace                      Bullying/Rudeness
7.    Gallantry/Charm                    Cowardice/Bitchiness

One last reminder.  A virtue is a habitual pattern of behaviour that will lead to a positive outcome while a vice is a habitual pattern of behaviour that will lead to a negative outcome.

 
The virtue of enterprise is the willingness to undertake new or risky projects with energy and initiative; it is the creating and trading of values.

Anything I might write here pales in significance against the seminal book Self Help by Samuel Smiles (1859).  The book does not read like the numerous self-improvement and self-help books that have followed in its wake.  It is more of a collection of short biographies and illustrations highlighting men of genius, accomplishment, and greatness.

If I might instil all these tales into a single formula it would be: men, usually of poor or working-class backgrounds, driven by an overwhelming passion to know and to create who worked indefatigably for sometimes decades to produce a result.  They endured hardship, pain, loss, and struggle towards a singular goal and achieved it.  The result was glory, honour, prestige, position, or wealth.  Many of these men are taught in history courses as the pioneers of the industrial revolution while others, like Wedgewood, are still household names.

What this summary of mine lacks is the extent of these men’s labours.  Some taught themselves chemistry, or art, or mechanics through the process of simple trial and error that lasted years and years.  I suppose the modern equivalent would be someone with no knowledge of computers who is working in a retail store forty hours a week and learning computer languages and programming in his spare time who then creates artificial intelligence in his basement with an antique IBM computer and a couple of spoons after ten years of labour.

I am reminded of a news program that I once saw.  Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I saw it or the specific details.  The gist was that this middle-aged woman wrote a book about how the system is against you and no matter how hard you work you will never succeed.  To support this she used examples from her life’s experience in the workplace.  Of course this message received a positive response from the socialists in academia because it confirmed their worldview.  So she was invited to give lectures to students telling them how they are destined for failure and mediocrity.  One listener did not buy it.

This young man picked a random American city on a map and went there with only $20 in his pocket.  He checked in at a homeless shelter and eventually got a job with a moving company.  Within a year he had an apartment and purchased a car and other luxuries.  Then he too wrote a book about his experiences, but no universities invited him to lecture on how America is still the land of opportunity for those willing to work for it.

It was not just the work.  There was another component.  In the book written by the woman she mentioned purchasing expensive jeans which she argued was an earned luxury.  But this was a luxury the young man denied himself.  Part of his success lie in thrift.

This story illustrates a number of components in enterprise.  There is of course work and thrift, but also imagination, goal-orientation, passion, determination and commitment.  My old writing teacher taught his class that “commitment is the willingness to be uncomfortable”.  Another aspect is the ability to seize opportunity.
There is an old proverb that says opportunity is a woman with a long fringe (or bangs in America) but bald to the back.  Sort of like a reverse mullet.  To catch her, you’ve got to grab the front, because when she turns to run off there is nothing to grab on to.

I would presume that if we looked at these two books side-by-side we would see how the young man who built himself up from nothing possessed these values and virtues while the older woman lacked them.  Not only did she lack them, but then she blamed the system for her own failings in character.  This illustrates her vice – cynicism.

 
You may have noticed that I listed passion among the aspects of enterprise.  Passion is also in the main list as a virtue in its own right.  Passion is the state of high interested, also known as the flow state.  The corresponding vice to passion is sentimentality, or fake positive emotion.  When someone feels nostalgia for a misremembered past and ladles it with deep feeling then they are being sentimental.

Just as enterprise and passion go hand in hand, so too does sentimentality and cynicism as positives and negatives of the same concept.  Cynicism is fake negative emotion.  At first glance you might think that the corresponding vice to enterprise would be sloth, but sloth is born of cynicism.  It asks “why bother”.  What’s the point of hard work when the odds are stacked against you? Why bother with enterprise when the system ensures your failure? Sometimes it even takes a moral spin.

I received a negative comment last year from someone who viewed my Youtube video on the 7 Romantic Virtues.  He wrote:

Don't you think that pride is among the 7 sins of Christianity? together with lust, here represented with charm.  Enterprise of the conquistadors, Chivalry you talk about!! Yes, America and Israel is being so chivalric indeed. Killing so many people and calling it chivalry! What has the white men brought to world? 2 world wars, atom bombs, industry, pollution, degradation, corruption, colonisation. Would you like me to count more? Self Reliance! dont make me laugh you sons of Cortez and gangsters

Aside from the man’s general ignorance and provocative attitude, I noticed how he appears to equate enterprise with colonialism, nation-building, and conquest.  Overall, he has a largely cynical attitude.  He is riled-up with fake emotion over perceived negatives.  I say charm and he hears lust.  Cynicism always assumes and presumes the worst and that prevents enterprise by promoting fear of progress.  In this instance, the fear is that we might step on someone’s toes.

Nonetheless, this is an important point to address.  Here is an excerpt of one of Samuel Smiles’ mini-biographies from Self Help:

Perhaps one of the most interesting is that connected with the disentombment of the Nineveh marbles, and the discovery of the long-lost cuneiform or arrow-headed character, in which the inscriptions on them are written,—a kind of writing which had been lost to the world since the period of the Macedonian conquest of Persia.

An intelligent cadet of the East India Company, stationed at Kermanshah, in Persia, had observed the curious cuneiform inscriptions on the old monuments in the neighborhood,—so old that all historical traces of them had been lost,—and amongst the inscriptions which he copied was that upon the celebrated rock of Behistun,—a perpendicular rock rising abruptly some 1,700 feet from the plain, the lower part bearing inscriptions for the space of about three hundred feet, in three languages,—the Persian, Scythian, and Assyrian. Comparison of the known with the unknown, of the language which survived with the language that had been lost, enabled this cadet to acquire some knowledge of the cuneiform character and even to form an alphabet. Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson sent his tracings home for examination. No professors in colleges knew anything about the cuneiform character; but there was a clerk of the East India House,—a modest unknown man of the name of Norris,—who had made this little-understood subject his study, to whom the tracings were submitted; and so accurate was his knowledge, that, though he had never seen the Behistun rock, he pronounced that Rawlinson had not copied the puzzling inscription with proper exactness. Rawlinson, who was still in the neighborhood of the rock, compared his copy with the original, and found that Norris was right; and by further comparison and careful study the knowledge of the cuneiform writing was thus greatly advanced.

So let me get this straight.  This 1700 foot rock had been sitting here for thousands of years and none of the locals thought to attempt a translation, even though one of the languages was currently indigenous to the region and it took a British army cadet from over a thousand miles away to make one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the Nineteenth Century.

 
Here is another on the subject of Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning frame that allowed for mechanised cotton production:

Arkwright's labors, however, were, comparatively speaking, only begun. He had still to perfect all the working details of his machine. It was in his hands the subject of constant modification and improvement, until eventually it was rendered practicable and profitable in an eminent degree. But success was only secured by long and patient labor; for some years, indeed, the speculation was disheartening and unprofitable, swallowing up a very large amount of capital without any result. When success began to appear more certain, then the Lancashire manufacturers fell upon Arkwright's patent to pull it in pieces, as the Cornish miners fell upon Boulton and Watt, to rob them of the profits of their steam-engine. Arkwright was even denounced as the enemy of the working people; and a mill which he built near Chorley was destroyed by a mob in the presence of a strong force of police and military. The Lancashire men refused to buy his materials, though they were confessedly the best in the market. Then they refused to pay patent-right for the use of his machines, and combined to crush him in the courts of law. To the disgust of right-minded people, Arkwright's patent was upset. But though beaten, he was not subdued. He established large mills in other parts of Lancashire, in Derbyshire, and at New Lanark, in Scotland. The mills at Cromford also came into his own hands at the expiring of his partnership with Strutt, and the amount and the excellence of his products were such, that in a short time he obtained so complete a control of the trade, that the prices were fixed by him, and he governed the main operations of the other cotton-spinners.

Arkwright was a tremendous worker, and a man of marvellous energy, ardor, and application in business. At one period of his life he was usually engaged, in the severe and continuous labors involved by the organization and conduct of his numerous manufactories, from four in the morning until nine at night. At fifty years of age he set to work to learn English grammar, and improve himself in writing and orthography. When he travelled, to save time, he went at great speed, drawn by four horses. Be it for good or for evil, Arkwright was the founder in England of the modern factory system, a branch of industry which has unquestionably proved a source of immense wealth to individuals and to the nation.

I would draw your attention to the activities of the mob against Arkwright.  These men represented the infamous Luddites who believed that the invention of machinery would put those who laboured by hand for their living out of work.  In theory it seems a sound concern, however the result of the factory system was more employment, a better standard of living, and cheaper goods for the consumer.  The Luddites were wrong and cynical about the future.

The stories of the British army cadet and Richard Arkwright and the Luddites illustrate the perils of enterprise.  Why did the Persian natives not decipher the rock?  Because they did not care.  Perhaps they took it for granted.  Who knows, but it took a British cadet with the curiosity and passion to discover an answer.  He had an enterprise that the natives lacked, just as the Luddites lacked the enterprise to see the benefits of industrialisation.  Just as the presence of the British Army in Persia can be seen as imperialism so too can the inventors and entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution be seen as forcing a new world upon the common man.

With enterprise comes greatness, be it large or small greatness.  The man who works hard to create a small business is greater than the people he employs.  He earned that small level of greatness by his hard work.  Meanwhile, his employees sneer at him behind his back for bossing them around, regardless of the fact that without him they would not be employed.

 
These same principles apply on the next level of greatness where a man functions on a national rather than a local level.  Here the effects of the entrepreneur’s actions are intensified.   Each decision he makes can have profound impact on the lives of people he has never met to which the on-lookers might declare either positive or negative.
Now let’s take this one level further.  Suppose it is not an individual entrepreneur but the collective enterprise of an entire nation? Now whose lives are being affected?  This is cynically called colonialism, or imperialism, or globalisation.

Business in the Seventeenth Century was a rough.  During the Middle-Ages, the privilege of engaging in commerce was granted by the monarch.   By the Renaissance, companies had been formed under a Royal Charter with the permission of the government to engage in trade with the government getting a cut.  Often companies from different countries were competing with each other for markets abroad.  When I say competing, I mean they shot at each other.  These companies essentially had their own armies and navies for the sole purpose of competing with other companies.  This was the age of mercantilism.

The most famous of these companies was the British East India Company.  Expansion of business in those days was not unlike today.  The drive was to open markets which took the form of trading posts.  These posts overtime developed into trading regions, which in time developed into complete ownership.  This is how India became part of the British Empire.

 
In Britain during the Industrial Revolution you had factories starving for raw materials from abroad.  The locals in the far flung corners could not keep up.  So to get things moving the companies would develop a region and if need be fight off bandits and so forth.  So when I say develop a region, what I mean is to make the area economically viable for the modern age, often at the expense of the locals.  The same process that brought us the Highland Clearances brought us colonialism in India.  The lives of the locals were turned up-side-down as many were pulled kicking and screaming from the Stone Age into the Nineteenth Century.

Britain and America did the same thing in the Twentieth Century when companies sent men to the Middle-East to develop the oil industry.  Before their arrival the people were living a millennia old pastoral lifestyle and lacked the knowledge, skill, industry, and enterprise to develop their natural resources.  However, once this industry was created by foreigners the governments nationalised the oil fields and held the world to ransom.  Today the protestors chant “no blood for oil” but in the Nineteenth Century, the British East India Company would have sent its private army to the region and prevented the nationalisation of the oil fields that they had created.

You see, there is a tradition in the West.  If you find an empty plot of land and you build a house on it and maybe a farm, then you have developed the land, made it productive, and therefore own it.  So it might be argued that such an action by our hypothetical modern East India Company against our hypothetical Middle-Eastern government would be a defence of property rights and therefore a moral conflict.

Enterprise is often despised or misinterpreted because the actions of entrepreneurs, for good or ill, affect the lives of those weaker than themselves.  Here’s one thing that I hated about high school.  The jocks were all assholes.  During PE while the rest of us shmucks were plodding around the track, the football players were in the gym lifting weights to become bigger, stronger, and more capable of kicking our asses.  On rare occasions, they were brought out to play football with the rest of us.  Not exactly fair.  But enterprise is like that.  Through hard work, determination, passion, and perseverance the weak become strong and enter the competition of life with what many call an unfair advantage.  So your choice is to either plod around the track of life with everyone else or to go to the weight room and earn that “unfair” advantage for yourself.

Like the cynical Luddites, there will always be people who fear the progress made by enterprise.  After the fact, they will still call it shit.  They will ignore the positive outcomes and focus on the human cost.  In term of colonialism or globalisation, they will denounce enterprise destroying the lives of people, but ignore that vastly superior life that they were given in return.

 
If you look at a graph of global Gross Domestic Product you will see a flat line for most on human history.  Then in 1800 it suddenly rockets up at an alarming rate and is still climbing today.  In 1800 most of the world lived in shacks and today most live in houses.  This is the result of the British and American spirit of enterprise.  However, the cynics would rather the Industrial Revolution never happened because they claim to feel bad about the cost.

It is in the Nature of man to produce.  I call this the curse of Adam.  “That man shall toil by the sweat of his brow”.  But really, it’s not much of a curse.  I believe that contrary to popular opinion the defining characteristic of a man is to work.  Some would say violence, but violence is only a means to an end should the need arise.  We are wired to produce, build, create, discover, and compete.  Sometimes that competition turns violent.

This is how Camille Paglia can say, “If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts”.  Yes indeed, women can be fantastic exemplars of enterprise and men can be cynical, lazy, good for nothing, slobs.  However, when a woman is being enterprising, she is exhibiting masculine traits.  The lazy man is not and most men would deem him worthless for it.

 
Even though a woman can be enterprising, it is not a natural feminine trait.  Rather it is a masculine trait that some women have successfully cultivated.  So in terms of virtue, then what would be the feminine counterpoint to masculine enterprise?  It seems to me that the answer is self-reliance.

It is in the nature of Man to do stuff, which often leaves the Woman alone.  In times past he might be at work all day, or be on a business trip lasting months or even years, or he might be in the military, or today he might want to spend Saturday tinkering in the garage or building model ships in his study.  If he has side-projects, he might come home from a hard day’s work and then start on his other work.  For me that is writing.  So where does that leave the Woman?

In times past she had her own work which involved household chores and routine tasks, but today, labour saving devices have reduced that workload considerable.  The stay at home wife has a lot more time on her hands than her predecessors.

Currently, I am in a position where I have a day job and I write at night.  I have no woman waiting for me, but I do have my cat, Voltaire.  When I get home and set myself to writing he will sit on my bed and meow for attention.  Even as I write this he is running about like a wild kitten wanting to play.  I see him like that poor woman all cooped-up and alone all day waiting for her man to return, but when he does all he wants to do is either relax from one piece of work or start on another.

This is where self-reliance comes in.  Traditionally, it has been held as the quality of a virtuous woman to be self-reliant so that she is not emotionally dependent on her man.  She has the power to find her own work, her own amusements, and her own life.  The corresponding vice is co-dependency.  This is a state where she is so dependent on his emotional support and validation that she almost does not exist without him.  This is unhealthy for her and an incredible burden on him.

Generally, there is a consensus that co-dependency is a bad thing.  The image that comes to mind is this desperate woman, but there is another angle.  Think instead of the empowered woman.  She gets what she wants from life and on her terms.  Most of all, she does not put-up with any shit.  Sounds cool, but how does it play out?

 
If her idea of female empowerment means that her man should be paying her attention and attending to her needs rather than working, then really it’s just an aggressive and pro-active form of co-dependency.  The source of her happiness is him.  He is responsible for keeping her happy or she may dump him.  So he lives his life with the Sword of Damocles over his head.   If I do not emotionally satisfy her, then she will leave me and break my heart.  So he sacrifices his identity, which is his work, to keep her emotionally secure.  When his soul is broken, then she laments that he is “just not the man that I fell in love with” and eventually he gets dumped anyway.  In this stereotype scenario the man is self-sufficient in his work, but the woman is not self-sufficient in her emotions. 

To be fair, just as many women have cultivated enterprise, so too have many men cultivated the vice of co-dependency.  Women fall in love with men, so they find the men who exhibit the masculine quality of enterprise attractive.  Generally, the more successful the man the prettier the woman is on his arm.  At a young age men recognise the pairing of beauty and success.  The hot cheerleader is with the captain of the football team.  Also, the attraction that comes with love is equated with beauty.  This leads to the false belief that if a man can attract and keep a beautiful woman, then he is successful in life.  This false belief leads to co-dependency in a man.  She is his emotional validation therefore he is not self-sufficient and he abandons his work, his identity, to please her.  Again this leads to the inevitable break-up and the cycle resumes.

It might be argued that as men of enterprise invented machines to make housework easier, the women had more free time to fill.  In looking for things to occupy themselves they exerted greater autonomy than before.  With that new found liberation came social activism, suffrage and eventually the feminist movement.  As more and more women were forced by social pressures to cultivate enterprise, more and more men felt less social pressure to be enterprising.  I doubt many modern men would, like their predecessors, take their financial situation into account before proposing marriage.  Today, both parties are expected to bring the fruits of their labour into the marriage.  As the need for real success is no longer a requirement in attracting a mate, the man can focus on love instead, which leads to the state of co-dependency.  Just a theory.

The female stereotype is in a difficult position.  She is attracted the man of enterprise because of the qualities required to be enterprising and the fruits of enterprise.  However, these same qualities force her to go it alone sometimes and to be emotionally self-sufficient so that he can get on with the work that he needs to do to be a man.  She may feel that he is ignoring her or does not love her, however it is that dynamic that keeps her interested in him.  Should he abandon his work, give her what she wants, and become co-dependent, then she will lose interest in him.  The only solution is for him to work, give her some loving, and then get back to work.  The rest of her time is hers to employ, but she must resolve herself to the constant state of wanting.  But that is okay.  From what I know of female psychology, women love the feeling of unfulfilled desire.

Lord Byron was not much of a London socialite like Beau Brummel.  Byron was too busy working and writing to party with the Dandies.  Brummel’s claim to fame is that he invented the men’s suit.  Other than that, he was the first person to be famous for nothing as he lived off his celebrity.  Eventually Brummel ended life in exile from Britain avoiding debt and quite insane.  Brummel proves the adage “pleasure unearned consumes”.

It is easy for modern Romantics to romanticise the Romantics.   We are seduced by a flamboyant image or attitude and those who make the list are those whose image gives us what we want to see.  I think few people would list people like James Watt, Adam Smith, Richard Arkwright, Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Babbage, Washington Roebling, or Nicola Tesla as Romantics.  People like Byron and other Romantic authors gave us a body of entertainment through their tireless labours, whereas the other men of enterprise left us technology and in some cases engineering marvels that we use and take for granted daily, but they are no less part of the Romantic cannon.

I might venture that they did more for the cause of Romanticism because rather than create Romantic figures in literature, they acted in the real world.  They exerted their individuality through their enterprise, often at the expense of their long-suffering and self-reliant wives, for the benefit of all who came after them.  The modern Romantic may do better to model themselves on these men rather than the fictional characters or public image that drew them to Romanticism in the first place.