From Equity to Equipoise
We must restore the internal locus of control in service of mastery and radiative self-sovereignty.
Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances. The process is ongoing, requiring us to identify and overcome intentional and unintentional barriers arising from bias or systemic structures.
—National Association of Colleges and Employers
The most effective way to destroy a civilization is to pathologize a generation. This begins when the Enemy creates Egregores that work against parents' and mentors’ efforts to cultivate agency in the young. Such dark arcana retard the development of one’s internal locus of control—or, worse, never allow it to develop.
Somewhere in time, justice gets recast as equity, a foul egalitarianism. This worship of weakness makes virtues out of victimhood. But it’s a vaporous victimhood, not the stuff of evidence and juries. Instead, it’s a grand, unfalsifiable narrative of inherited historical wrongs by groups against groups, abstracted, systemic, unconscious, or institutional.
Those agitating on behalf of these victim groups seize new powers. Their role is to reallocate that which the Generative Ones have created, but these new elites don’t generate anything. Victimhood becomes a negative-sum membership club that grants access to levels of unearned, unjust power. And equity is the coinage of this rotten clerisy.
Their want of talent is eventually laid bare, but only in the detritus of what was formerly good. They destroy what they redistribute. And perhaps that is their goal, these worshippers of Angra Mainyu.
Equity narratives hide amid jargon and authoritarian shibboleths:
It’s their fault.
You are not responsible.
You deserve better.
Life should be fair.
You were born a victim.
Those who hear this over and over eventually become less human. Such beliefs act both as surgery and salve—a spiritual lobotomy in the removal of their budding self-sovereignty, where the salve acts as a numbing agent for vacant shells, bodies like bleeding begging bowls. What do you call those who were once humans who mutter the same simple phrases and wander in search of brains?
We shall raise our sons and daughters not to be undead victims.
It doesn’t matter whether a boy bedizens himself in pink, a girl learns bushcraft, or a child is born the progeny of a serf or a slave. Neither your skin nor sex nor sexuality keeps you in a purgatory of systemic victimhood. Life will forever be unfair and unequal, even for the boy or girl born with all apparent advantages. There will always be someone smarter, richer, or more capable. Your life will not be measured against a cosmic scoreboard of privileges. It will be measured by what you managed to do with what the unfolding All bestowed.
The question is whether you will internalize different Master Narratives.
Find meaning in mastery.
Own your responsibility.
You deserve what you earn.
Life is unfair, but still a gift.
You were born to excel.
Theoria and Scientia can spend another thousand years arguing whether humans have free will. But we have things to do.
As the Smith-Tinkerer anneals a sword, he anneals his dignity, his spirit, and self-possession. As the Mother-Carer nurses the child and soothes its sibling, she rules with love and embodies the Shekinah.
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
…
There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class.
—Thomas Jefferson to John Adams
We call on each soul to cultivate sovereignty in themselves, their children, and their pupils. That starts with refusing victimhood.
Survivors of pogroms and death camps invented therapies around radical self-possession. By contrast, victimologies are diabolical and destructive recruitment tools for the undead army. Its Egregore elevates the Enemy as it razes our civilization. Because the Enemy hates that which it had no hand in creating, it wants to destroy civilization and the Prometheans who created it.
So we must fight a war on two fronts: the Interocosm and the Exterocosm. The first is the war for the spirit of a young person. If we allow one to lose his equipoise or never gain it, he will be unable to confront the world’s challenges.
As within, so without.
They will become conscripts in the forces of resentment, decadence, and destruction.
As without, so within.
The secret to mastery, therefore, begins with equipoise.
One’s actions are the sum of her cognition, emotion, and instincts. When these are out of balance, she is more likely to behave destructively.
Aligning Executives—cognition, emotion, and instincts—takes continuous practice, so practice daily, first in thought, then in word, and finally in deed.
Avoid relying on one Executive. Excess cognition makes for an automaton, excess emotion makes for a zealot, and excess instinct makes for an animal.
Sometimes, the head, heart, and gut compete. Equipoise means learning to use whatever time you have to align them, even if it’s only a breath.
Everyone faces trials and painful experiences. Resilience is the objective of healing, as scars are stronger than skin. Equipoise—centered self-possession—is both the purpose and the practice.
Why?
Ours is the way of struggle, challenge, and striving.
STRUGGLE
There is no pleasure without pain
There is no satisfaction without struggle
There is no agency without avoidance
In times of abundance, we must fast and save to avoid the ennui of wealth. Then, we must practice our virtues and talents. When we do, we become the natural aristoi, not because we can signal our status or tempt with our trinkets, but because we become the objects of mimesis—mentors of virtue and talent starting new cycles of passion and persistence. We develop our agency by sacrificing some present pleasures to future fulfillment.
CHALLENGE
There is no improvement without effort
There is no success without failure
There is no victory without challenge
When everyone receives a medal, it’s like adulterating gold with lead. The metal is worth less, the medal is worth less, and the honor is worth less. In failure, you receive nothing but the sting of loss. But then you bestow a gift upon your aspirational self: Try again and endeavor to improve. Over and over.
This is the foundation of spiritual alchemy.
STRIVING
There is no excellence without exertion
There is no mastery without misery
There is no sublimity without striving
When you look upon the Generative Ones, do so with admiration. If you feel envy well up inside, replace that feeling. Admiration indicates you are standing in right relation to another who approaches mastery. Transmute any residual envy into a call to excellence. Then, seek mastery until your death. All the while you will radiate self-sovereignty, which will inspire admiration in others.
The world will inherit your efforts, which might be as close as you will ever get to immortality.
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