Political Idolatry

post by Arturo Macias (arturo-macias) · 2025-02-10T15:26:30.686Z · LW · GW · 7 comments

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Idolatry is the worship of non-conscious objects, sometimes falsely attributing consciousness to them, sometimes putting the value of some admittedly nonconscious being over that of conscious beings. Idolatry leads to human sacrifice because to prove your idol more important than the human soul the natural test is to sacrifice a human in the altar of the idol. That is precisely why Judaism was founded on the prohibition of idolatry and human sacrifice.

When the religious idols of the past were weakened, political idolatries substituted them. Race, nation and the working class were given intrinsic reality and value. Let’s be clear: I am absolutely for sacrificing yourself or even others for an idea, if in the other side of the idea there are real humans improving their happiness and potential. If the flag, the party, or the ideology serves the people, sacrifice is not idolatry, but martyrdom. But conscious beings must only sacrifice for other conscious beings because nothing in this world is higher than us. 

For a few decades after the second World War, this idea was almost universal. Different branches of humanism fought often cruel wars, but always under the banner of a better tomorrow. Those happy days are over. 

The fear of death, the feeling of disenchantment toward a world where there is not more guide than your own mind has conjured back the political and religious demons of the past. Mind is real and conscious, but mortal. The human longing for eternal existence is the natural portal for the smuggling of idolatry: a rock, a tree or some arbitrarily defined tribe (nation, race, even gender) can outlast your life, so it is natural to put those trivial but durable objects over the daily miracle of (mortal) consciousness. 

But nothing really exists but you (your conscious mind [EA · GW], your cartesian self, your res cogitans) and other conscious beings. The public life is instrumental: the government, the flag or the garbage collection service are necessary, and consequently worthy of the sacrifice of blood and treasury, but their value is to make the private life possible. It is in private life where we find what matters: romantic love, family life and the quest for knowledge, enlightenment and creation.

The price of discarding superstition is accepting that the meaning of existence is not something we have to search for, but something we create. The humble utility function in the Economics textbook is in fact a massive metaphysical burden that every intelligent being must cope with. What do I want? Adam was given by God the task of naming the world, and we have inherited the task of putting value on it. The task is massive, and freedom is often seen by moral weaklings as the ultimate slavery. We end up hating our reason and desire. As Jacob, we wrestle with God’s angel, with our own image.   

But the only alternative to freedom and reason is self-mutilation. I read “Memoirs of Hadrian” in my early twenties, and I knew that I had read the only self-help book I would ever need; what else can you do with your life but a work of art? A work of art is not made of truth (while it shall respect truth), but of will and desire. 

Sometimes, of course, you can feel disenchanted, and of course you can always find some shaman, offering you comfort at the modest cost of your soul now (probably of your blood tomorrow). The race of Baal worshippers is inexhaustible: esoteric nationalists (René Guénon, Julius Evola,  Alexander Dugin), religious totalitarians (Sayyid Qutb, Edmund Waldstein) and race and gender critic theorists (Theo Goldberg, Andrea Dworkin) are irredeemable enemies first of Truth, then of Mankind. Politics is as complex as the problems of society itself [EA · GW], and there is room for massive disagreement, but many political ideologies are idolatry, and we can effortlessly reject them. 

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