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On secrets, masculinity, and power

Much has been written about the threat to freedom posed by data technologies. Digital platforms and hardware capture ever more detail about our lives, making them available to corporations and ultimately the State.

Less has been written about the threat to psychic freedom posed by a broader culture of transparency - a ubiquitous set of modern assumptions that have infected our minds, actions, and self-conceptions. These false values affect the way that we speak, the way that we hold ourselves, and the profundity of the mental states that we are able to access.

They must be challenged. Aristocrats of the soul must learn to keep secrets and to access secret experiences.

The eighteenth century staked much on self-confidence and the aristocratic concept of secrecy. In a society that no longer has such courage, there can be no more “arcana,” no more hierarchy, no more secret diplomacy; in fact, no more politics. To every great politics belongs the “arcanum.”

Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form

Before we can reform ourselves, we must understand the driving forces behind the system we challenge.

Claudio Bravo, The Veil (1987)

Mega-organizations like nation states and multi-national corporations advance transparency because relying on interpersonal trust is impossible at their inhuman scale. In place of trust, they use quantification, rules, and accountability, driven by ruthless surveillance and measurement.

Transparency creates trust, the new dogma affirms. What is forgotten thereby is that such insistence on transparency is occurring in a society where the meaning of "trust" has been massively compromised.

Wherever information is very easy to obtain, as is the case today, the social system switches from trust to control. The society of transparency is not a society of trust, but a society of control.

— Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society

Citizens accept this imposition on their personal spheres because of the convenience of data-driven technologies, because they believe they have a stake in the ‘democratic’ system that benefits from such information flows, and ultimately because of their apathy.

Compulsive conformity proceeds from transparency. In this way, transparency stabilizes the dominant system.

There are also cultural forces bringing our most intimate aspects to the surface for inspection.

In office culture, for example, the preservation of secret knowledge by individuals is intolerable because it slows progress, makes employees irreplaceable, and interrupts the homogenization of workers necessary for the optimal functioning of the corporate machine. There can be no secrets between worker ants.

Instead, relationships must be declared, information must be democratized, and unique skills must be systematized. The managerial class can tolerate no competing nobility. In the capitalist longhouse, all must be made open, safe, accessible, and productive. The longhouse is open plan.

Likewise, in a society that manically pursues equality, men must be robbed of the qualities that make them natural leaders of their wives and families. They must be stripped of the advantages, strength, and confidence that make them the lords of their households.

Accompanying this emasculation is the rise of therapy culture, in which men are encouraged to freely disclose their inner states, and, in the resulting moments of vulnerability, are conditioned to further overshare and self-doubt. To become transparent.

This over-socialization of men is a process of spiritual feminization, training them to resolve their dissatisfaction through impotent dialogue, navel-gazing, and chatter. Their instinct for action is replaced by an instinct to talk.

How should the ascendent aristocracy respond to these pressures? Amid the fury of the discourse, we must learn to love silence.

Avoid as far as thou canst the tumult of men; for talk concerning worldly things, though it be innocently undertaken, is a hindrance, so quickly are we led captive and defiled by vanity. Many a time I wish that I had held my peace... But why do we talk and gossip so continually, seeing that we so rarely resume our silence without some hurt done to our conscience?

Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

Silence is the first step towards the creation of space and the channeling of attention for higher things.

To all this, let it be said: 'Enough!', so that some men may return to long-lasting paths, long-lasting risks, long-lasting gazes, and long-lasting silence; so that the wind of the open sea may blow again… and arouse the sleepers of the West.

Julius Evola, Pagan Imperialism

When we do speak we must have the discipline and creativity to do so in ways that does not disclose our guarded secrets. How?