Archeofuturism

by Guillaume Faye

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  These expected catastrophes are the direct consequence of modernity’s incorrigible faith in miracles: suffice it to consider the myth that a high standard of living could be achieved on a global scale, or the idea of extending economic systems based on high energy consumption to all. The dominant paradigm of materialist egalitarianism – a ‘democratic’ consumer society of ten billion people in the Twenty-first century without any indiscriminate plundering of the environment – is a senseless utopia.

  This absurd faith clashes with physical limits. Hence, the civilisation it has engendered will not last for much longer. This is the paradox of egalitarian materialism: it is idealistic and concretely unfeasible. And this for social reasons – it leads to the dismantling of society – and even more so on the environmental level, given that the planet cannot physically sustain the widespread development of economic forms based on high energy consumption. ‘Scientific progress’ has missed its mark. This, however, should not lead to a rejection of technology and science, but – as we shall see later on – to their redefinition along inegalitarian lines.

  It is not a matter of whether the global civilisation built on egalitarian modernity will collapse, but of when this will happen. We are thus finding ourselves in an emergency situation (what Carl Schmitt referred to as Ernstfall, a fundamental concept which he argued liberal egalitarianism never really grasped, as it interprets the world according to a providential and miraculous logic, shaped by the ascending line of progress and development). Modernity and egalitarianism have always refused to believe that an end could come for them as well: they have never acknowledged their own mistakes, pretending to ignore that all civilisations have been – and are – mortal. For the first time certainty exists that the global order of civilisation is threatened with collapse, as it is founded on the spurious and paradoxical idea of idealist materialism.

  4 – Content: Archeofuturism

  Probably only after catastrophe will have destroyed modernity, with its global myth and ideology, will an alternative view of the world assert itself by virtue of necessity. No one will have the foresight or courage to implement it before chaos breaks loose.

  It is up to us, therefore, who are living in the interregnum – to use Giorgio Locchi’s expression – to develop the idea of the world for the post-catastrophic age. It may be centred on Archeofuturism, but this concept must be filled with meaning.

  1 – The essence of archaism. It is necessary to give the word ‘archaic’ its true meaning, which is a positive one, as suggested by the Greek noun archè, meaning both ‘foundation’ and ‘beginning’ – in other words, ‘founding impulse’. The word also means ‘what creates and is unchangeable’ and refers to the central notion of ‘order’. ‘Archaic’ does not mean ‘backward-looking’, for it is the historical past that has engendered the egalitarian philosophy of modernity that is now falling into ruin, and hence any form of historical regression would be absurd. Modernity already belongs to a past that is over. Is archaism a form of traditionalism? Yes and no. Traditionalism entails the transmission of values and is rightly opposed to those doctrines that wish to make a clean sweep of things. It all depends on what traditions are handed down: universalist and egalitarian traditions are not acceptable, nor are those that are diseased, demobilising and fit only for museums. Should we not draw a distinction when it comes to traditions (values transmitted) between positive and harmful ones? Our current of thought has always been torn and weakened by an artificial distinction contrasting ‘traditionalists’ with those ‘who look towards the future’. Archeofuturism can reconcile these two families through a dialectic overcoming.

  The challenges that shake the world and threaten the downfall of egalitarian modernity are already of an archaic sort: the religious challenge of Islam; the geopolitical and thalassocratic[34] battles over scarce agricultural, fishing and energy resources; the conflict between North and South, and colonising immigration into the northern hemisphere; the pollution of the planet and the physical clash between the ideology of development and reality.

  All these challenges lead us back to age-old problems. The almost theological political discussions of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, which were like debates concerning the gender of angels, are being cast into oblivion.

  This return to ‘archaic’ (and hence fundamental) questions baffles ‘modern’ intellectuals, who expound on homosexuals’ right to get married and other such inanities. The attraction towards the insignificant and the memorialising of the past is a characteristic of dying modernity. Modernity is backward-looking, whereas archaism is futurist.

  On the other hand, as foretold by philosopher Raymond Ruyer – someone hated by Leftist intellectuals – in his seminal works Les nuisances idéologiques[35] and Les cents prochains siècles,[36] when the historical period of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries will have come to a close, and its egalitarian hallucinations will have been sunk by catastrophe, humanity will revert to its archaic values, which are purely biological and human (i.e., anthropological): the separation of gender roles; the transmission of ethnic and folk traditions, spirituality and priestly organisation; visible and structuring social hierarchies; the worship of ancestors; rites and tests of initiation; the re-establishment of organic communities (from the family to the folk); the de-individualisation of marriage (unions must be the concern of the whole community and not merely of the married couple); an end of the confusion between eroticism and conjugality; the prestige of the warrior caste; inequality among social statuses – not implicit inequality, which is unjust and frustrating and is what we find today in egalitarian utopias, but explicit and ideologically legitimated inequality; duties that match rights, hence a rigorous justice that gives people a sense of responsibility; a definition of peoples – and of all established groups or bodies – as diachronic communities of destiny rather than synchronic masses of individual atoms.

  In brief, in the vast, oscillating movement of history which Nietzsche called ‘the eternal return of the identical’,[37] future centuries will witness a return to these archaic values one way or another.

  The problem for us Europeans is not having these values imposed upon us, on account of our cowardliness, by Islam – as is already happening – but rather of being capable of asserting these values ourselves by drawing them from our historical memory.

  Recently, a great patron of the French press, whose name I cannot mention, and who is known for his social-liberal views, shared the following disenchanted thought with me: ‘In the long run, the values of the market economy will lose against those of Islam, for they are exclusively based on individual economic profit, and this is inhuman and transient.’ It is up to us to make sure that it won’t be Islam that will impose an inevitable return to reality upon us.

  It is evident that the ideology in power today – and not for much longer – considers these above-mentioned values diabolical, just as a paranoid madman might see the psychiatrist that is curing him as the devil. Actually, these are the values of justice. Forever suited to human nature, these values reject the erroneous idea of individual emancipation promoted by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which leads to the isolation of man and social barbarism. These archaic values are just in the ancient Greek sense of the term, for they see man for what he is, a zoon politikòn (‘social and organic animal within a communitarian city’) rather than for what he is not – an asexual and isolated atom possessing universal and enduring pseudo-rights.

  Concretely, these anti-individualist values enable the attainment of self-realisation, active solidarity and social peace, whereas the falsely emancipating individualism of egalitarian doctrines brings the law of the jungle.

  2 – The essence of futurism. A constant feature of the European mindset is the rejection of what is unchangeable: a Faustian, (at)tempting character (in the sense of one who both ‘makes attempts’ and ‘makes one undergo temptations’), which embarks upon new forms of civilisation. The Eur
opean cultural background America has inherited is adventurous and – most importantly – voluntaristic. It aims to change the world through the creation of empires or technological science, by means of vast plans that represent the anticipated representation of a constructed future. The ‘future’, as opposed to a historical cycle that repeats itself, is what lies at the centre of the European worldview. To paraphrase Heidegger, it could be said that history is like a path that unwinds through a forest (Holzweg),[38] or rather the course of a river along which one must always face new dangers and make new discoveries. Besides, according to this futurist view, technological and scientific inventions, just like political or geopolitical projects – regarded as challenges – are approached from an aesthetic as well as utilitarian angle. Aviation, rockets, submarines and nuclear power have sprung from rationalised fantasies where the scientific spirit has managed to carry out the plan conceived by the aesthetic.

  The European soul is marked by a longing for the future, a sign of youthfulness. To put it shortly, it is historial and imaginal (it constantly envisages future history according to a plan).

  In art, too, European civilisation has been the only one in which forms have undergone constant renovation and all cyclical return of past models has been banned. The spirit of artworks must remain unchanged (the archaic pole) but their form must always change (the futurist pole). The European soul is defined by ongoing creation and invention – the poiesis[39] of the Greeks – while being always aware of the fact that in its direction and values it must remain faithful to tradition.

  The essence of futurism is the planning of the future (not ‘making a clean sweep of the past’); the envisaging of civilisation – in this case, European civilisation – as a work in motion, to paraphrase Wagner’s[40] musical expression. Politics here are understood not merely in a narrow sense as the ‘identification of one’s enemy’ (Carl Schmitt), but as the identification of one’s friend (who is part of the folk community?) and – most importantly – as the future transformation of the folk, driven by ambition, a spirit of independence, creativity and the will to power...

  This dynamic force, however, and projection towards the future, meets many obstacles. The first is egalitarian modernity with its morality – which lays guilt upon force – and its historical fatalism. The second obstacle, or rather danger, in the social field is represented by a deviated form of futurism which may lead to utopian aberrations for the sheer taste of ‘change for the sake of change’. Thirdly, when left to itself – particularly in the realm of technological science – the futurist mentality may prove suicidal, especially because of its impact on the environment, given the risk of deifying technology as something that can ‘solve everything’.

  Hence, futurism must be tempered with archaism; or, to use a bold expression, we might say that archaism must cleanse futurism.

  The futurist mindset has also encountered a number of ‘barriers’: a limit to space-based enterprises because of their high cost, the trivialising of technological science and its loss of meaning, disenchantment towards all positive and ‘creative’ values of mobilisation, widespread loss of poetic and aesthetic qualities through commercialisation, etc.

  The implication of all this is that futurism can only become a driving force if it takes a new course. The neo-archaic world that is looming near is the only one capable of freeing the futurist spirit from the impasses of modernity.

  3 – The Archeofuturist synthesis as a philosophical alliance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.[41] Futurism and archaism are both related to Apollonian and Dionysian principles that have always appeared to be mutually opposed, when in fact they are complementary. The futurist pole is Apollonian in its sovereign and rational plan to shape the world, and Dionysian in its aesthetic and romantic mobilisation of pure energy. Archaism is telluric in it appeal to timeless forces and conformity to the archè, but it is also Apollonian, for it is founded on wisdom and the endurance of human order.

  It is a question, for future society, of no longer thinking according to the exclusive logic of ‘or’ but according to the inclusive logic of ‘and’; of simultaneously embracing ultra-science and a return to traditional solutions that date back into the mists of time. Futurism is actually more vigorous than archaism: for reasons of sheer realism, a futurist plan can only be implemented by resorting to archaism.

  Hence the paradox of Archeofuturism, which rejects all ideas of progress, as everything pertaining to the worldview of a people must rest on unchangeable bases (although forms and expressions may vary): for over the past 50,000 years homo sapiens has changed very little, and archaic and pre-modern models of social organisation have proven valid. The fallacious idea of progress must be replaced with movement.

  An astonishing degree of continuity exists between archaic values and the revolutions technological science makes possible. Why? Because the egalitarian and humanitarian mindset of modern man, for instance, does not allow him to manage the explosive possibilities behind genetic engineering or the new electromagnetic weapons (in the making). The incompatibility between modern egalitarian ideology and futurism emerges in the extraordinary limits placed upon the civil nuclear power industry in the West through the influence of manipulated public opinion, or in the pseudo-ethical obstacles raised in opposition to genetic engineering, the creation of ‘modified’ human beings, and positive eugenics.

  The more archaic futurism becomes, the more radical it will be; the more futurist archaism becomes, the more radical it will be.

  Needless to say, Archeofuturism is based on the Nietzschean idea of Umwertung[42] – the radical overthrowing of modern values – and on a spherical view of history.

  Egalitarian modernity, founded as it is on faith in progress and boundless development, has adopted a secular version of the linear, ascendant, eschatological and soteriological (redemptive) view of history, which stretches back to the time of the religions of salvation, and which is also shared by socialist and liberal democratic thought. Traditional societies (particularly non-European ones) have developed a cyclical, repetitive and hence fatalistic view of history. The Nietzschean view of history, which Locchi described as ‘spherical’, differs from both the linear and the cyclical notions of progress.

  So what is this view?

  Let us imagine a sphere, a billiard ball moving in disorderly fashion across a surface, or moved by the (necessarily imperfect) will of a player: after a number of spins, the same point on the surface of the ball will inevitably touch the cloth. This is the ‘eternal return of the identical’, but not of the ‘same’. For the sphere is moving and even if that very ‘same’ point is touching the cloth, its position is not the same as before. This represents the return of a ‘comparable’ situation, but in a different place. The same image can be applied to the succession of the seasons and the historical outlook of Archeofuturism: the return to archaic values should not be understood as a cyclical return to the past (a past that has failed, as it has engendered the catastrophe of modernity), but rather as the re-emergence of archaic social configurations in a new context. In other terms, this means applying age-old solutions to completely new problems; it means the reappearance of a forgotten and transfigured order in a different historical context.

  Three additional points of a philosophical nature are in order. The first: Archeofuturism distinguishes itself from conventional ‘traditionalism’ because of its approach to technological science, which it does not demonise: for the essence of technological science is not connected to egalitarian modernity, but rather has its roots in the ethno-cultural heritage of Europe, and particularly ancient Greece. Let us remember that the French Revolution ‘did not need any scientists’,[43] so much so that it guillotined several of them.

  Second point: Archeofuturism is a changing worldview. The values of the arché, projected into the future, are made newly relevant and transfigured. The future is not the negation of the tradition and historical memory of a folk, but rather their metamorp
hosis, by which they are ultimately reinforced and regenerated. To use a metaphor: what does a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine have in common with an Athenian trireme? Nothing and everything: one represents the metamorphosis of the other, but both, in different ages, have served precisely the same purpose and embody the same values (including the same aesthetic values).

  Third point: Archeofuturism is a concept of order, a concept that upsets modern minds, which are shaped by the fallacious individualist ethics of emancipation and the rejection of discipline that has led to the swindle of ‘contemporary art’ and wreaked havoc in the educational and socio-economic systems.

  According to the view of Plato that he conveyed in The Republic, order is not injustice: Every conception of order is revolutionary and every revolution is a return to authentic order.

  4 – The concrete applications of Archeofuturism. A concept for which no examples can be given is not an effective one. Marxism has partly failed because Marx and Engels, caught up in the ‘philosophy of no’ and ultra-criticism, failed to provide a concrete description – however brief – of their ‘Communist society’. The result: while its critique of capitalism was often a pertinent one, the Communist paradigm has been implemented in an improvised manner, often under the leadership of autocrats and tyrants. Communism has collapsed because, despite being an ideology radically opposed to the bourgeois order, it remained an abstract logic of resentment that people have attempted to put into practice through hastily drawn political dogmas. Today, new paths must be paved:

  A. An answer to the approaching confrontation between North and South and the rise of Islam. This global return to the archaic that began in the 1980s has radically altered modern geopolitics: Islam has once more embarked on its march of conquest, which European colonisation had interrupted a few centuries ago; colonising migrations are pouring into the northern hemisphere like a backlash against colonisation and the demographic ageing of the North; the Nineteenth and Twentieth century opposition between Europe and North America, and – within the Eurasian continent – between ‘Westerners’ (which did not always include Germans) and Slavs is coming to an end. Today’s contrast – tomorrow’s confrontation – is between North and South. We are already facing Archeofuturist challenges.