The Great Traitor

And sole victor

I admire only two types of people: the potentially mad and the potential suicide. - Emil Cioran

Obscure Structure

I don’t think an agitated prodding of the word meaning, suspecting it of harboring an extra vowel and three consonants qualifies one to be a nihilist when there’s figures like Cioran to contend with. Believing himself to be of a particular type, now diagnosable and internally mapped to near perfection back in the 60s by disciples of Freud and object-relations theory. The basic thesis, in regards to schizoids, which I assert Cioran was, being that of a bifurcated mind occurring pre-cognition producing three pseudo egos with contested domain: ‘the non-libidinal ego’ responsible for dealing with the real world, the repressed ‘libidinal ego’ shoring up fantasy to maintain vitality, and the masterstroke of the system: the ‘internal saboteur’ responsible for making sure no part of the self ever got close to being an ‘object’ again, initiation almost always a rejecting mother. Simplified: child’s needs met with negative response but survival dictates attachment, few green neurons do the best they can and direct libido inward. The external can only be endured, so I live internally. That’s the foundation on which the psyche is built.

Into adulthood the non-libidinal ego is semi-functional (this being the exterior system, it has come to define it in the modern DSM, a false and hollow caricature), and treats reality like a 16 year old working cash at McDonald’s. During isolation the libidinal ego asserts itself, sure of their infallible youth, talent, and beauty they’ll drift off engulfed in fantasy, often spinning elaborate worlds with years of continuity and poetic pathos. But unavoidably night comes, and with it the internal symposium resumes and has soaked more blood than the senate floor: Cato told to speak the fuck up, Cicero dismissed for his spartan tongue, and Tiberius thrown out for lack of cruelty. Let’s pick up where we left off: we’re garbage, why. The Saboteur takes the stage: Nlib you’re a dullard hermit wasting your life operating below your capabilities. Libi you’re a petulant egotist addicted to dream masturbation, and despite claimed talent produce nothing. That settled, let’s try to conclude if we should exist, and if so what to be. I would also like to revisit suicide if we have time.

we always have time

In an attempt to simplify things I’ve presented this chronologically, but in reality all these processes happen simultaneously at a frenzied pace and it doesn’t stop, ever. The outer self and inner self are generally quarantined, but the saboteur is omnipresent. Every thought or action immediately negated, nothing goes undebated. We haven’t decided if we should exist and you want to do laundry? Constant conflict without motion, a searing engine of inertia apt described as tortuous. A marathon well ran demands less energy and toil than these guys putting on a shoe.

This sounds absurd, but testimonials to this tri-formation of self don’t just live in object-relations theory but of excess in the literary canon. Cioran, Pessoa, Beckett, Bernhard, Kafka, any chronicler of paralysis with dazzling style. Pessoa’s entire heteronym system was designed around it. The one benefit of being confined to recursive self-assessment aeternum is a sharpening of the mind, at least while it maintains material to support an edge. Cioran most acute, his first work gave articulation to a suffering that was previously beyond coherence and with undeniable brilliance, manic lucidity, intuited metaphysical mastery, hero of hysterics, the hidden tribe had found its voice.

Unfortunately, by publishing a book, a widely acclaimed one at that, without even a pseudonym, he had exposed himself to the most terrible danger imaginable for his kind, evidence left behind that could be queried without his aid of interpretation, at any time, by anyone. While the saboteur will leverage any argument necessary to fulfill his aims the original fear driving it is preverbal and thus hard to articulate: they fear becoming an object because the external self was designed for compliance and de-escalation, if someone perceives them incorrectly they become incorrect - perception is possession of both definition. It escapes our comprehension for the same reason it renders them untreatable, there was never a coherent cognitive structure to begin with, nonetheless return to. And Cioran’s first work being so honest, naked - and thoroughly consumed: compulsory symposium resumes! They imagine every possible interpretation or criticism stemmed from it along with each variation and subvariation and proceed to internalize and debate it to dust until they fall of exhaustion and wake convinced they should be crucified. Possibly for months. Their life in microcosm. Unwilling to pay this price ever again, Cioran developed his philosophy of total negation. He claimed hours meditating upon the void, hoping for erasure he began to worship it. The schizoid suffers because he can never give up on his dream of becoming, but if one could CLEANLY deny existence, ALL relation, everything with COMPLETE discipline - the paradox shatters. A legitimate victory. He wrote his next book.

A Short History of Decay

And a rope coils as though around some ideal neck, borrowing the tone of a suppliant power. I have been waiting for you forever, I have watched your terrors, your struggles and your rages, I have seen your rumpled sheets, the pillow where your fury gnawed, as I have heard the swear words with which you gratified the gods. Charitable, I sympathize and offer my services. For you were born to hang yourself, like all those who disdain an answer to their doubts or an escape to their despair. - E. C.

His prose here is immaculate, crystalline, an irony so refined and light by the 2nd page you place yourself his pupil, propelled in the wake of an icy confidence that each aphorism could be carved in stone and every single syllable spit into them was to spec, consciously designed with aim of seducing the men he knew his brothers towards the conclusion of the complete and final futility of their lives. He wasn’t exactly wrong. Rationalized in forms the ever cerebral schizoid would never be able to clean himself of hypocrisy if denied, a lil lick-spittle romanticism if some got spooked - just come stand here, and it won’t hurt, it will stop. In the venomous subtleties his artistry shined the brightest, the nods, grimaces and bearing of teeth sparse throughout to you, the reader, each earning an uncanny pause, the odd sensation he was looking right at you with a smile of unknown origin.

By what is ‘profound’ in us, we are victims of every evil: no salvation as long as we still conform to our being. Something must disappear from our composition, some deadly spring dry up; hence there is only one way out: to abolish the soul, its aspirations and abysses; our dreams were poisoned by it; we must extirpate it, along with its cravings for “depth,” its “inner” fruitfulness, and its other aberrations. - E.C.

This was not an act of liberation but genocide, knowing that once the desire to ‘be’ had been excised, the tension required to produce their single redemption and refuge, the creative capacity born of the necessity of illusion just to endure existence would be extinguished with nothing but a brittle synthetic nihilism in its place. Enjoy void worship.

Who has not experienced the desire to perpetrate an incomparable crime which would exclude him from the human race? Who has not coveted ignominy in order to sever for good the links which attach him to others, to suffer a condemnation without appeal and thereby to reach the peace of the abyss? - E.C.

As for motive: a sealing ritual ensuring the soul’s exile , and in the process of reconfiguring his psyche for durability he became a little morbid, and his lifelong fixation on death turned extinction fetish. Be wary of voids, they tend to fill. In lust he saw all things coming to an end, soon, and believing his tribe to be the only ones composed to produce illusions capable of replacing our failing institutions his goal was to simply nip it in the bud. He made indulgences to malevolence but didn’t quite believe himself, it was a cold appraisal that held this world had to end but temperature did little to hide the bias. I can’t deny him his grudge, if you knew how it’s earned. But even today schizoids seeking insight into their condition can find themselves strangled in the crib by the first person they felt ever really understood them. Think what you want of Cioran’s dubious claims regarding his tribe’s capabilities (still haven’t done the laundry), but he believed it and he believed in the consequences. It wasn’t enough it means nothing, it should be nothing, and I will do it. That’s a nihilist. Would you be surprised to hear I admire the man?

That mysterious, profound, complicated, ineffable race that has excelled and excels in everything, even in failure, will have an end worthy for itself and will know calamities it need not blush for. - E.C.

Cioran continued to be a prolific author well into old age, though his genius spent he never lost his cold brilliance; analysis/style intact, inspiration not. He was willing to talk of the book at times, but always defensively, it was what he needed to do to survive he said. He failed to acknowledge that he escaped having already won his glory. By what right did he deny the seduced their trials, that faint chance of redemption? Their victory?

None, but they never had the right to exist in the first place. Symposium’s opening.

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