Accepting The Death of the West

And the Five Stages of Grief

The West is dead. Western civilization is over. It died because its people killed it. The religion that animated it was rejected because of the misapplication of the scientific method, and the fraud has been caught too late.

I know this. Others do, too. But most do not. In many cases, it is because they were not paying attention. However, several are paying attention to the health of our civilization, and they deny its death.

Their denial is a problem for me because I want to bring about a new civilization in the lands that belonged to the West and bury its corpse so a new tree can grow from it. Yet the people in denial obstruct my task. They are proceeding through the five stages of grief and are stuck in the first stage.

And I need these people to cease their attempts at reanimating the corpse. Because while the West is dead and will remain so, they are still active and obstructing my arboreal efforts. Yet if they can be moved away from their fruitless task, the people who hope to restore the West might find better, sweeter berries growing from the trees that I — and they — might plant.

So, I wonder how I might help the disaffected and denying children of Faust accept the death of their father. And I recognize that to do so, they must be ushered through the grieving process. This is why it behooves me to describe the process that people proceed through when they recognize the death of the West. It proceeds through the five stages, like any other grieving process, and a few self-destructive behaviors mark each stage.

I will describe the stages here so that one of Faust’s children may see themselves in the process and accelerate to the end because that is where I need them to be for them to be amenable to my vision.

Let us begin.

Denial

The first stage is denial. People stuck in this stage typically fall into one of four categories: Ignorance, Fronting, Contempt, or Sublimation.

Ignorance means that people are unaware of the existence of Western Civilization as a thing that would die. It might be considered a pre-denial, which poorly maps to the five stages of the grief model. However, most people belong to it, so it is worth mentioning so it might be remembered.

The second is Fronting. This means pretending that the West has not died and that it is either healthy or formidable. It is a lie told by people who like the West and have a low pain tolerance. The preferred method for sustaining this lie is cherry-picking statistics and anecdotes that are amenable to it. Therefore, its ubiquity depends on the ease with which these statistics can be found, so the lie has been losing popularity and will continue to do so. The people who tell it do so because they have a low pain tolerance and a poor imagination. The former damages their ability to confront painful truths. And the latter threatens them with hopelessness.

The third is Contempt. This means pretending that one is happy the West has died. It is the same behavior one exhibits when their significant other leaves them, and they pretend that the other is always a terrible person. This lie wears off when reality hits the one who tells it hard and in the ear.

And the fourth is Sublimation. This means pretending that the West was never really a thing. It is an attempt to return to the state of ignorance. It is rarer because it can’t stick to the person who tells it. And it can’t stick because the truth of what the sublimator knows always resides beneath their lies, and the deteriorating conditions of the world they live in continually remind them.

Anger

The second stage is anger. And it pretty much only has one form: blame. Some people blame capitalism, others blame Jews, more blame black people, and assorted factions blame Christians, Muslims, and more beyond these. Most people who have recognized the death of the West are stuck in this stage.

They remain there because it is profitable for the political factions that tyrannize the lands that belonged to the West to pit factions against one another as part of their divide-and-conquer strategy. And because nobody is perfect, there will always be an abundance of evidence that each faction can use to blame others for our societal decay.

Nevertheless, most people are losers who desperately search for others whom they can blame for their unenviable conditions, and the blame game caters well to this all-too-human tendency.

Recognizing this, many would either say that no faction is to blame or that blaming one another for the problem is pointless. These people encounter their rebuttal from those who assert that the issues that have emerged following the death of the West can only be solved if we identify those who are to blame and hold them accountable. A third group would say that it is more critical for us to blame ourselves and fix our own problems before judging others.

But I belong to a fourth group. There are nameable populations which are responsible for the collapse of Western civilization. They can and should be blamed, and it is not possible to repair the damage done to the West if they are not reeled in. However, I do not believe this is likely to ever happen, nor do I care if it does, because I desire a break from the Western tradition altogether, and I believe the damage already done is irreparable.

Thus, I believe the best approach for persuading these people is to first emphasize that the point of no return was crossed long ago and that the most felicitous course of action is to move on to something new while retaining the lessons learned from the West’s demise.

Bargaining

The third stage is bargaining. People who enter this stage recognize that Western civilization has died and have decided to make the best home they can find in its decaying corpse. They are a noteworthy minority and most closely identify with the phrase "enjoy the decline."

I dislike these people and attribute their bleak outlook to a lack of initiative and imagination. They recognize the problem, understand that some value can still be extracted from the decaying systems, and are willing to do so, yet they fail to conceive of how a better alternative might be pulled from the Western corpse. So, I judge them guilty of the great error of pettiness. Their lack of vision constrains their ability to do anything of value for themselves or anyone else. Thus, their energy and position are wasted — although they might be put to good use if these people aimed for something higher than hedonism.

Depression

The fourth stage is depression. It is the most famous stage, and the condition of being in this stage is called black pilling. Black-pilled people recognize that the West has died, know numerous problems exist that will not be fixed, and are unable to enjoy the decline. Yet they lack a positive vision for the future and enter the depression state.

I am all in favor of the black pill. Its acceptance is necessary for someone to move through the grief pipeline. However, many people are effeminate and love to wallow in their pathos, so some become addicted to the black pill. This is a mistake because it squanders their time and energy. And it occurs, yet again, because of a lack of imagination. It is exacerbated further because people love to feel miserable and helpless because helplessness absolves them of responsibility, and misery reinforces it.

Now, people who remain black-pilled because of their lack of imagination can be white-pilled with positive goals and the revelation of distinct activities that can bring those about. However, it is beyond my power and yours to save the people who do not want to be saved. This is not to say that they are beyond help — merely that they are beyond our ability to help. Although sociopaths might gaslight you into thinking that you have a responsibility to save the people who would punish you for doing so. They tell this lie because they want to disguise their sadism as altruism.

Acceptance

Finally, the fifth stage is acceptance. People reach it by one of two paths. They either take the black pill and tire of its pessimism, or they reach acceptance immediately because they had little affection for the West and did not mourn its passing in the first place. As time passes and reasons for loving the Western nations disappear, more and more people will take the second path.

And that’s a great thing. Because people are much more optimistic and willing to consider new ways forward after they reach the acceptance phase. This hopeful disposition is the soil from which life will begin again — if something is planted there.

This brings us to the secret sixth stage of grief.

Vision

The secret sixth stage is vision. When people accept the terrible event that initiated their grief, they can begin to consider new futures that account for the tragic event’s occurrence and are unencumbered by the pessimism and dishonesty of its early stages.

A few have already reached this point and proposed new modes of being that account for the death of the West and the need for new outlooks that will carry the Children of Faust through the desert of the real produced by modernity.

I will not enumerate them here, but I identify significant shortcomings in the viability, desirability, and coherence of those I have already seen. And I attribute the source of these shortcomings to a lack of imagination on the part of the people who produce them.

So, I present a different vision, which I call Gardening, and the philosophy of the guild pill facilitates that. I will summarize it briefly and dole out the details over time.

The Vision I Present

The West is dead. It needs a replacement. The replacement will be a positive vision. Pursuing that vision must rebuild cultural capital and instill a sense of meaning within the Children of Faust. This vision must be literal and include identifiable goals that people can pursue. All contenders for this vision that have been presented are unviable. Something else is needed. And it is best if something else is already desired, palpable, and amenable to extant social and technological forces.

That something else is aesthetics. We spend our lives consuming media that shows us worlds that resonate with us far more than our own. These worlds often have a unifying aesthetic that renders them unique and identifiable. And some could plausibly exist. Our technological mastery makes realizing these worlds possible, and our superior networking ability allows us to find other people who resonate with the same worlds as us.

So we should start building them.

The people who wished they could attend a Renaissance festival and live in that world were right. They are not alone, and they should find other people who will commit themselves to its creation and just do it.

And the people who wished they could live like the hobbits in the Shire should find others with the same longing, identify a land where that life would be amenable, and form an isolated community there.

The people who saw the luminescent forests of Pandora in the Avatar films should use the internet to find their compatriots and dedicate their energies to bringing this about.

Others beyond these exist as well. The ability of these aesthetic longings to unify people and unleash their creative potential has already been proven in the form of the subculture phenomenon, which later gave way to fandom communities and then Tiktok aesthetics. However, these particular instances are all juvenile and malformed attempts of an aesthetic longing to make themselves known. And their flaws prevent them from achieving any exalted end.

But they reach maturity in the form of a new organization, the guild, which can realize its members' aesthetic aspirations. To briefly describe it, a guild is like a combination of a trade union, an art commune, and a military structure. Through their creation, new cultures will emerge, new communities will be formed, and the many sufferings of the Children of Faust will be redeemed.

This has been Gene of the Space Guild.

End transmission.