Tag Archives: Gods of the Copybook Headings

Gnon and Elua

Edit 2014/08/04: A number of Christian men whose thoughts I have come to respect have made objections to this post. I have concluded that whatever my original intentions were, they do not matter at this point as, at best, the execution was flawed and deeply confused. I no longer stand behind or support what was written in this post. I’ll leave this here to read for those that may be interested, but if you decide to read it please use discernment as this post was in error. May God forgive me if this led anyone to wrong thinking. For less confused writing by on the issue at hand, see here.

Scott writes of Moloch, the demon god who traps men into sacrificing what they value most for power, and argues:

When the veil is lifted, Gnon-aka-the-GotCHa-aka-the-Gods-of-Earth turn out to be Moloch-aka-the-Outer-Gods. Submitting to them doesn’t make you “free”, there is no spontaneous order, any gifts they have given you are an unlikely and contingent output of a blind idiot process whose next iteration will just as happily destroy you.

Instead of obeying Gnon, obeying reality, we should summon forth, Elua:

He is the god of flowers and free love and all soft and fragile things. Of art and science and philosophy and love. Of niceness, community, and civilization. He is a god of humans.
…
Elua is just like “Love as thou wilt” and “All knowlege is worth having”. He is the patron deity of exactly the kind of sickeningly sweet namby-pamby charitable liberalism that Arthur is complaining about.”

Elua, the god of unreality, the god of progressive liberalism, who will usher forth the utopia of free love and endless pleasure. Kipling called Elua by another name:

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

Scott wishes to create the Gods of the Market, to uplift man with hopes for Elua will make wishes of horses. He hopes that perhaps this time we can have perpetual peace, the Fuller Life, and abundance for all, that this time, prostration before Elua, unlike all prostrations to prior Gods of the Marketplace, will not result in damnation and the return of the terror and slaughter.

This time we can escape to unreality!

What Scott misses is that we are the of Gnon. We were born, evolved, and raised under the rule of Gnon; there is no escape to Elua, for we are not born of Elua, we are born of Gnon. We can not escape Gnon, because we are Gnon and Gnon is us. The only escape is total self-annihilation. He calls Elua a god of humans, but he is not, he is a god of what progressives wish humans were. He is the most inhuman and alien of gods.

Gnon is captured in verse by Kipling, Elua is captured in doggerel by Lennon:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

This is the promised utopia of Elua: a life of peace, a life of hedonism, a terrifying hell devoid of meaning. Elua offers perpetual peace if you only value nothing, he offers eternal life if only you reject the bonds of kinship, he offers limitless pleasure if only you sacrifice your future for the hedonism of today, he offers untold joy if only you renounce meaning itself.

When the veil is lifted, Elua turns out to be Nihil, the limitless void. You can only embrace Elua by giving yourself to nothingness. You offer up not just your child, not just your body, but your very soul on the altar of hedonism. You achieve what you love most, pleasure, by sacrificing yourself, your hope, your purpose, your very being.

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

If offered, would Scott attach himself to a device that injected dopamine directly into his brain, eternal bliss if only he does not move or think?

For this is what Elua offers: eternal heroin. The god of the poppy.

Even if Scott accepts Elua’s desolate hell of eternal bliss, others wouldn’t. If it meant escape from Elua, I would help Land free Cthulu. Being eaten first would be infinitely preferable to eternal self-nullifcation. I would plunge the world into holy war if Elua were to incarnate, even the most brutal savagery of Gnon is but a tender ministration compared to the blissful void.

If Nihil is, brutal savagery is the only response. If the god of civilization is also the god of the eternal nothing, I will commit human sacrifice on the altar of the gods of savagery. If the god of bliss is the god of emptiness, I will gladly embrace pain to work to his destruction. Death, war, destruction, genocide, violence, blood, savagery, fire, all are superior to the void.

I am sure I am not alone. We men were born of Gnon, it is what were evolved for, it is what we know, it is what we are. Civilization may hold back Gnon, but if embracing Gnon is the only escape from Elua, we will burn it to the ground. Man was made for struggle, man was not made for the void. Struggle may kill the body, perpetual peace devours the soul. Gnon may be a monstrous horror, but he is our monstrous horror, Elua is a greater terror far more alien.

Do not fear those who can kill only the body; fear him who can destroy the soul.

If Scott and others try to bring forth their progressive god of the blissful void, we will work to bring their dreams to ruin. We will burn civilization to the ground and salt the ruins, for savagery is preferable to the void. We will free Gnon to from his chains if only to escape; we will unleash Cthulu and be devoured first if only he will devour Elua after. We will plunge the universe into eternal war between two superintelligences if only to stop Elua from being the only one. Better a god of infinite paper-clips than Elua. We will destroy the universe itself if only to escape into death. Better the grave than eternal self-annihilation.

Gnon may be a terrible elder god from the outer void but Elua is the void itself.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

I’ve been sick, too sick to do anything much more than lie on the couch and watch Rome (good show by the way). I have not completed the post on our decline is not complete so here’s something else. Neoreactionaries have taken to talking of Gnon, but the concept is not new; Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings was the same concept described a century ago. Reality, by whatever appellation we may provide, can only be ignored for so long. The longer it is ignored, the more vicious its return. 

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Here’s a bit of background on the poem and its meaning.