David Myatt - The Culture of Arete

Ζῆνα δέ τις προφρόνως ἐπινίκια κλάζων
τεύξεται φρενῶν τὸ πᾶν:
τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ-
σαντα, τὸν πάθει μάθος
θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.
στάζει δ᾽ ἔν θ᾽ ὕπνῳ πρὸ καρδίας
μνησιπήμων πόνος: καὶ παρ᾽ ἄ-
κοντας ἦλθε σωφρονεῖν.
δαιμόνων δέ που χάρις βίαιος
σέλμα σεμνὸν ἡμένων.

Life is or can be so beautiful, it is just that we humans seem to have a propensity to undermine or destroy or not even see this beauty, especially manifest as this beauty is in Nature, and in and through a mutual personal love between two human beings.

But why – just why – do we human beings have a propensity to so undermine or destroy or not even see the beauty of Life, of Nature, of love? Because of our desires, our selfish desires, and because of the abstractions – the lifeless, un-numinous, abstractions we human beings have, in our hubris, manufactured; which lifeless abstractions we pursue, or we place before such beauty, such a numinous apprehension and appreciation of Nature, as Nature is – a natural unfolding (φύσις) and a very slow natural change – without our interference and our arrogant desire to change things quickly according to some abstraction such as “progress” or according to some “plan” or some “destiny” or scheme we in our arrogance, insolence, and haste have devised or believe in.

However, I am as responsible as anyone for having committed the error of hubris – having pursued, for most of my adult life, some abstraction or other, and thus placed some manufactured goal, or some idealized perceived duty, before the beauty of love, and before that letting-be which allows us to appreciate, to feel, the numinosity of Nature.

In retrospect, life, for me, has been in so many respects enjoyable and replete with joy – a joy sufficient and often innocent enough to keep me mostly balanced through many times of personal tragedy and loss, and also in situations when I myself suffered the consequences of some dishonourable act or acts by some human beings who seemed to have lost or not to even have possessed the human qualities of empathy and honour.

Now, as I recall and review over five decades of conscious living, I am also aware of just how selfish I have been, and in particular aware of how I, through focussing on abstractions, ideals and supra-personal goals, have personally hurt people who loved me, and personally caused or been the cause of suffering in this world. But I like to believe that I have, finally, learnt and understood some important things – especially about myself – as a result of my diverse rather adventurous and sometimes strange life.

Thus it is that I find, through and because of such a recalling, that what I value now, what I feel and sense is most important, is a direct, personal, mutual love between two human beings – and that such love is far far more important, more real, more human, than any abstraction, than any idealism, than any so-called duty, than any dogma, than any cause, however “idealistic”; more important – far more important – than any ideology, than any and all -isms and -ologies be such -isms and such -ologies understood conventionally as political, or religious or social. For it is the desire to love, to be loved – and the desire to cease to cause suffering – which are important, which should be our priority, and which are the true measure of our own humanity.

What, therefore, shall I personally miss the most as my own mortal life now moves toward its fated ending? It is the rural England that I love, where I feel most at home, where I know I belong, and where I have lived and worked for many many years of my adult life – the rural England of small villages, hamlets, and farms, far from cities and main roads, that still (but only just) exists today in parts of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Somerset and elsewhere. The rural England of small fields, hedgerows, trees of Oak, where – over centuries – a certain natural balance has been achieved such that Nature still lives and thrives there where human beings can still feel, know, the natural rhythm of life through the seasons, and where they are connected to the land, the landscape, because they have dwelt, lived, worked there year after year, season after season, and thus know in a personal, direct, way every field, every hedge, every tree, every pond, every stream, around them within a day of walking.

This is the rural England where change is slow, and often or mostly undesired and where a certain old, more traditional, attitude to life and living still exists, and which attitude is one of preferring the direct slow experience of what is around, what is natural, what is of Nature, to the artificial modern world of cities and towns and fast transportation and vapid so-called “entertainment” of others.

That is what I shall miss the most, what I love and have treasured – beyond women loved, progeny sown, true friends known:

These are the joys, some of the very simple, the very English, things I treasure; that I have loved the most, and whose memories I shall seek to keep flowing within me as my own life slowly ebbs away…

For it is to the now almost lost England of such things that I belong, that I have always belonged, even though for many years I, in my profane often selfish stupidity, forget this, subsumed as I was in my hubris with un-numinous abstractions.

The phrase Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ – attributed to Heraclitus - expresses something of the true nature of Physis. See, for example, my brief essay Physis, Nature, Concealment, and Natural Change, where I suggest that the phrase implies something akin to Concealment accompanies Physis, or Concealment remains with Physis, like a friend (or, The natural companion of Physis is concealment.)

We, as thinking human beings - who can use λόγος - can not only uncover Φύσις but also conceal it again by our use of ideation, and by our "naming" of things. Why is why Heraclitus also said:

The Scent of Meadow Grass

Four days on from Fran's death, and I am in one of the ancient meadows on the Farm - soon, the haymaking will begin, again, but for now I can smell that special smell - the scent - of meadow grass growing in hot June Sun.

The varied grasses are at least knee high; often higher - and I startle a Deer, hiding, as I walk through the grass: up it leaps to bound and leap away to escape through a hole in the far hedge where the Oak, now full in leaf, rises so tall above me, only a faint breeze to disturb its leaves. Over the field, a Buzzard circles, occasionally calling while small Cumulus clouds drift under the blue sky of another English Summer. Around, over, the pond where I sit, Damsel flies, and two dark blue large Dragonflies, skitting, dancing, mating, landing - for the flow of life goes on.

Why such warm almost cloudless weather? It is not as if I wish my sadness, my grief, my guilt to be lifted and taken from me - but, still, a certain beauty touches me, bringing a few moments of peace. Shall I strive to push these aside, and remember, again, as yesterday when I walked through nettles, letting them sting my bare hands and arms? Now, a stripped yellow Dragonfly ventures forth over the pond - to be attacked, driven away by the Blue as two Blackbirds, tree dwelling and five hedge-Oaks apart, sing their varied, long-lasting songs, for the flow of living goes on.

So many Damsel flies, now, I have lost count, and, then, a Ruddy Darter lands on a leaf, feet from my feet. For minutes, it is still, as, around me, Bumblebees and fastly-moving, loud, flies pass by in their seemingly random way. On a nearby fallen branch - some small, glossy, black, winged insect scoops out dead wood with its legs, having made a perfectly round, small, hole above the sunken leaf litter where black Beetles scutter, to dive down to what is their deep. Then, a Bumblebee drops, stumbly, briefly, down to the very edge, as if to drink, for the flow of life goes on.

Is there meaning, for me, here? It would seem so in these brief moments - and yet, and yet there is no Fran to return to, no Fran sitting here, sharing such moments. But is she, in some indefinable numinous way, here beyond the bounds of memory, Time, grief, and thought? I do not know, only knowing a certain vague, mysterious feeling, which might just be imagination. Now, I must arise and walk: no sleep, here, as in the years gone by when I would lie down among this warm grass to feel the peace that lives in such a place as this.

III

Bright Purple Orchids

It is just over one month since I sat on this hill - then, it was also in the Sun of an early Summer's morning, and only a few days after Francine had killed herself, tormented as she was by despair, anguish and a deep self-deprecation. For I called her Francine - and she liked it - since it seemed to capture something of her quixotic, individual, nature which the names Frances and Fran did not really express. Now, as in the past when she was alive, I find myself still saying to myself - and sometimes out loud - "I love you Francine," as if it were some mantra that might bring her back to life.

But, yet again, I am alone - here, where there are bright purple Orchids on the lower slopes just above the tree-line and where, below, a Deer stood on the narrow footpath, watching me approach until, apparently unafraid, it sauntered off into the bushes growing by and beyond the stream that runs down through that quite small wooded valley. Overhead - the resident Buzzard, calling. Around - flies, starting their day as the warmth of the Sun increases to slowly dispel the clinging mist that lingers cloud-like over the flat land between those not-too-distant hills.

The stark cry of a Woodpecker, as it flies, dipping, from tree to tree. The loud Bumblebee, feeding on the many small flowers - blue, yellow, violet, red. The many birds - whose personal names I do not and probably never shall know - singing, in the many trees and bushes below, up from where there is a small clearing, gently rising as the hill beyond, and in which clearing two chestnut horses graze, half a mile or more from the nearest cottage whose white walls and faded-red roof break the swathe of green which, furlong upon furlong, reaches up to the very top of the hill, making my horizon: fields of pasture; hedges bursting with English-summer green

The ferns, since my last visit, are fully open, and almost all stretched fully out, and I sit on an old plastic bag, feeling the tragedy of Francine's death, and that I should be crying far more than I am now. For the tears, hours upon hour, day following day, has lessened, until - yesterday - I wept only once. So I feel guilty, partly believing I should be mourning her far more. But Nature, here, is alive and I have begun to sense again the flow of Life, sensing somehow and strangely - and hoping it is not some delusion - that she, by her dying has given me this gift, this chance; these moments to reconnect myself with Life. A chance to redeem and be redeemed, to feel the beauty and the goodness inherent in life and to know, to deeply feel, the promise of human existence - as if she by her living and her dying has not only freed herself from her own inner pain, anguish and torment, but also finally, irretrievably, freed me from that lower part of myself that still kept me in thrall, even sometimes during our relationship, to abstractions, to a wayward questing after suffering-causing ideals.

So I am embodied, here, by my being, my thoughts, my feeling - as I sense she is, and somehow alive if I feel this, if I remember this, her, if I change; if I make her sacrifice worthwhile. For there is a depth not felt before; never quite experienced like this before; a depth of feeling; a depth of being; a deep connexion with Life, especially as it presences itself, here, around me, in me, on this hill, site of an ancient hill-fort - as if the sadness and the sorrow and the tragedy have been transformed, melded somehow with the quiet reverential joy of being in such a beautiful, still numinous aspect of Nature, to form something new, strange, far beyond words, bringing a definite knowing of myself, of my failure, a knowing of humility never known before. Thus there is a letting-be; a simple dwelling through sitting in silence and in peace, exhaling wordless and wordfull words of love. Change, life, death - all around; all here, and one day I also shall change as my beautiful Francine has changed. No fear, now; only that knowing that knows the flow for the changing it is.

Yet do such feelings, such thoughts, demean her death? Or are they merely some escape or delusion? I do not really know - I never probably will know for certain - but I hope not, even as I know I might be mistaken, in this. But this is all I have: this, the result of my month of effort, the month of tears - these slight answers; these meagre answers; these so slight positive feelings, feelings which may fade, which could fade, bringing back such anguish as caused so many thoughts of bringing forward death. For over a month, a struggle to find answers to the questions, the despair, which perplexed and often almost overwhelmed me. Faith; prayer; redemption - seeking to believe; needing to believe; desiring to pray, trying to pray. Trying again to find the answers in God; in Christianity, in Buddhism, in Taoism, in Islam, and in and from many other Ways.

But there is now, for me it seems, only the quiet sitting in places such as this; only the answers of, the development of, The Numinous Way. Only the feeling of being one connexion; only the yearning to presence the good, to cease to cause suffering; to strive to keep that silence, that non-interference, which which may well be the beginning of my own redemption and a move toward, back, to being in balance with Nature, with the Cosmos, with myself - and with the Fran who has gone, leaving me behind.

There is, here, only sky, trees, hill, and history - and no one to share such beauty, such warmth of Summer Sun. No one to lie beside and feel the yearning for that short sleep which often overcomes us in a such heat as this. Instead - a small brown spotted Butterfly passes; then, an even smaller one of browny-orange with black spots on its wings, and then a larger white of black-tipped wings. So many flowers to feed, upon - and the heat of the Sun has taken those almost-annoying flies off, away, perhaps bushward into shade, leaving me free to rest in my new strange sad-tragic-quiet-reverential-remorseful-joy while a small Cumulus cloud in an otherwise cloudless sky drifts above, to my right, making faces. A sad face; then of anger then of joy - until it, too, becomes almost formless here in this flicker of Life which passes quickly upon one planet in one Galaxy among a Cosmos, changing slowly, as it does.

So many flowers; and Grasshoppers, calling, in the longer grass, above where three Crows caw, as they caw. So much Life, bursting, burgeoning, forth, to mingle as I become mingled with a future and a past, one connexion among so many where, ten feet away, the wind-shaped sapling of Oak, no taller than a three Rabbits, hopping, curves gracefully out over lichen-covered rock

IV

No Clouds Above A Natural Silence

Over the past decade there has been, for me, a complete change of perspective, for I have gone from upholding and violently propagating the racialism of National-Socialism – and encouraging the overthrow of the existing status quo through revolutionary insurrection – to the acceptance of empathy and compassion, and to that gentle, quiet, desire to cease to cause suffering, which form the basis for what I have called The Numinous Way, with this Numinous Way being apolitical, undogmatic, and considering both race and “the folk” as unethical abstractions which move us away from empathy and compassion and which thus obscure our true human nature.

Why unethical? Because The Numinous Way uncovers, through empathy, the nexion we, as individuals, are to all life, thus making us aware of how all life – sentient and otherwise – is connected and part of that matrix, that Unity, which is the Cosmos, and it is a knowing and appreciation of this connexion which is lost when we impose abstractions upon life, and especially when we judge other beings by a criteria established by some such abstraction. For this knowing and appreciation of our connexion to other life is the beginning of compassion, and a presencing – a manifestation – of our humanity, of our knowing of ourselves in relation to other life, and the Cosmos itself; and, thus, a placing of us, as individuals, in an ethical, and a Cosmic, perspective.

This change of my perspective – this personal change in me – arose, or derived, from several things: from involvement with and belief in, during the past decade, a certain Way of Life, considered by many to be a religion; from thinking deeply about certain ethical questions whose genesis was reflecting upon my thirty years of violent political activism; and from a variety of personal events and experiences, two of which events involved the loss of loved ones, and one of which loss involved the suicide of my fiancée.

However, this change was a slow, often difficult, process, and there was to be, during this decade, a stubborn refusal, by me, to follow – except for short periods – where this change led me; a stubborn refusal to-be, except for short periods, the person I was shown to be, should-be, by and through this alchemical process of inner change. Thus was there a stubborn clinging to doing what I conceived to be my honourable duty, and it is only in the last month that I have finally and to my own satisfaction resolved, in an ethical way, the dilemma of such a duty, thus ending my association with a particular Way of Life, which Way many consider a religion.

During this decade of inner reflexion, of great outward change – of lifestyle, occupation, belief, place of dwelling – there was a quite slow rediscovery of the individual I had been before my fanatical pursuit of a political cause became the priority of my life: the person behind the various rôles played or assumed, over more than three decades, for the purpose of attaining particular outer goals deriving from some abstraction, some ideal, or some other impersonal thing. That is, I gradually, over the past decade, ceased believing in a certain principle which I had formerly accepted; which principle I had placed before my own personal feelings; which principle I had used, quite deliberately, to change myself; and which principle I had stubbornly adhered to for almost four decades, believing that it was my honourable duty to do so.

This principle was that in order to attain one’s “ideal world”, certain sacrifices had to be made “for the greater good”. In accord with this principle, I considered I had certain duties, and accordingly sacrificed not only my own, personal, happiness, but also that of others, including that of four women who loved me; and it is perhaps fair to conclude that it was this principle which made me seem to others to be, for three decades, a political fanatic, and – for many years after that – a kind of religious zealot. Indeed, it is probably even fairer to conclude that I was indeed such a fanatic and such a zealot, for, in the pursuit of some abstraction, some ideal, some notion of duty, some dogma, I deliberately controlled my own nature, a nature evident – over the decades – in my poetry; in my wanderings as a vagabond; in my initial enthusiasm as a Christian monk; in the tears cried upon hearing some sublime piece of music; in my love of Nature, and of women. That is, there were always times in my life when I reverted back to being the person I felt, I knew, I was; always times when I stopped, for a few months, or a year or maybe longer, interfering in the world; when I ceased to place a perceived duty before myself, and when I thus interacted with others, with the world, only in a direct, personal, empathic way sans some ideal, some dogma.

Now, I have finally come to understand that this principle of idealism, the guiding principle of most of my adult life, is unethical, and therefore fundamentally wrong and inhuman. That is, it is a manufactured abstraction; a great cause of suffering, and that nothing – no idealism, no cause, no ideal, no dogma, no perceived duty – is worth or justifies the suffering of any living-being, sentient or otherwise. That it is empathy, compassion and a personal love which are human, the essence of our humanity: not some abstract notion of duty; not some idealism. That it is the impersonal interference in the affairs of others – based on some cause, some belief, some dogma, some perceived duty, some ideology, some creed, some ideal, some manufactured abstraction – which causes and greatly contributes to suffering, and which moves us far away from empathy and compassion and thus diverts us from our humanity and from changing ourselves, in a quiet way, into a more evolved, a more empathic and more compassionate, human being.

Thus, in many ways, The Numinous Way – as now developed, and as explicated by me in the past year or so – represents my true nature: the hard, difficult, re-discovery of what I had controlled, and lost; and, perhaps more importantly, an evolution of that personal nature as a result of my diverse experiences, my learning from my mistakes, and my empathic awareness of the suffering I have caused to others.

Hence, I have been, for many decades, wrong; misguided. Or, rather, I misguided myself, allowing idealism and a perceived duty to triumph over, to veil, my humanity. My good intentions were no excuse, even though, for nearly four decades, I made them an excuse, as idealists always do. For, during all the decades of my various involvements – of my arrogant interference based on some abstraction – I sincerely believed I was doing what was “right”, or “honourable”, and that such suffering as I caused, or aided, or incited, was “necessary” for some ideal to be born in some “future”.

But now my inescapable reality is that of a personal empathy, a personal compassion, a simple, quiet, letting-be; a knowing that such answers as I have, now, are just my answers, and that I have no duty other than to be human, to gently strive to be a better human being through reforming myself by quietly cultivating empathy and compassion. Of course, I do not expect to be understood, and probably will continue to be judged, by others, according to some, or all, of my former beliefs, involvements.

θάνατος δὲ τότ᾽ ἔσσεται, ὁκκότε κεν δὴ
Μοῖραι ἐπικλώσωσ…..

The Culture of ἀρετή

In Memoriam Frances