{"id":220260,"date":"2025-12-31T15:24:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T21:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mindseyemag.com\/magazine\/?p=220260"},"modified":"2025-12-31T15:26:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T21:26:19","slug":"the-spirit-of-gravity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mindseyemag.com\/magazine\/the-spirit-of-gravity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spirit of Gravity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A liberal capitalist open humanitarian society keeps children out of farms and workshops, saves women from lives of prostitution, saves countless millions from painful disease, allows people to have diets better than rationed cans of soup, etc. Because of that, normal people will always side with open liberal capitalists over authoritarians. This is supposed to lead to endless exponential growth and basically eliminate poverty across the world. Slowly but surely, the problems of overpopulation are mitigated.<\/p>\n

This is the only acceptable program for modern government, or even any modern morality or religion. You either aid in the relief of Malthusian conditions for all, or you are a fascist. For some on the right, the problem with this is the elimination of borders and national\/racial identity. But the technological end of history can still occur without massive demographic change. Will people on the right join the march for progress as long as their neighborhoods don\u2019t become too alien? It\u2019s a reasonable demand that still works within the bounds of a liberal capitalist worldview.<\/p>\n

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Most people on the right, however, don\u2019t oppose liberalism because it eliminates poverty and provides a fairer justice system\u2014their opposition is more instinctive. It\u2019s about the weight and presumptiveness of liberal morality. Some conservatives do overreact to the point where they valorize poverty or oppose modern medicine, but this is an extreme response to a more general opposition to the modern liberal taste.<\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, I was first exposed to \u201cthe modern liberal taste\u201d through pro-gay marriage political commercials I saw on TV. Growing up in a conservative religious family at the time, I interpreted \u201cthe gay rights movement\u201d as a strange and hostile force. By the time I was in high school, the pro-gay moral indignation was at its peak. Shows like Glee<\/em> would depict a gay character getting mercilessly bullied and we were forced to recognize the ugliness of such exaggerated cruelty. Rejecting cruelty and accepting that many people, with no fault of their own, don\u2019t exemplify traditional heterosexuality. This was all very rational and most people, including conservatives, accept that today.<\/p>\n

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The thing that really bothered me and the thing that made me oppose the modern liberal taste was the pathetic moralizing around gay people. I can perfectly accept that an ugly bigot bullying some kind-hearted lesbian is cringe and lame. I cannot accept that someone is better than me simply for having more pity for the weak than me. The argument \u201cyou are a bad person for being anti-gay and I am a good person for being pro-gay\u201d completely gave away the conceit. Even as a 12-year-old I had a sharp Nietzschean sense for discerning resentful power plays disguised as morality. Having a morality, or system of values, revolving around pity for the marginalized was always a very feminine, shallow, and pathetic thing to me.<\/p>\n

Liberal secularists like Steven Pinker and Francis Fukuyama make the mistake of conflating the general trend of scientific progress, intellectual openness, and representative government with the embrace of the modern liberal spirit and a rejection of any anti-liberal program. This is illustrated in Pinker\u2019s commentary on Nietzsche. Despite Nietzsche being one of the earliest and strongest advocates of absolute scientific seriousness in all matters, Pinker responds to him with absurd moral hysteria. Pinker says in Enlightenment Now<\/em>:<\/p>\n

If I could go back in time, I might confront him as follows: \u201cI am a superman: hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without conscience. As you recommend, I will achieve heroic glory by exterminating some chattering dwarves. Starting with you<\/em>, Shorty. And I might do a few things to that Nazi sister of yours, too. Unless, that is, you can think of a reason<\/em> why I should not.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the typical crash out of any moralist who can\u2019t cope with Nietzsche suggesting that their values may not be metaphysically, objectively, magically true.<\/p>\n

The question is: is modern liberal morality a rational and justified force\u2014\u201cgoodness itself\u201d\u2014moving against the tide of ignorance, superstition, and old white guys trying to cling on to the past? Or is it a generally reasonable and justified force that has become exaggerated, spiritualized, and ultimately irrational and nonscientific? Is the weight and spirit of gravity connected to liberal morality something that we all ought to carry, or is it an echo of past memories of trauma, bitter humiliation, ethnic woundedness, and hereditary exhaustion?<\/p>\n

When I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity\u2014through him all things fall.<\/p>\n

Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A heavy spirit of gravity from liberal moralists has been conditioned into us. They fill our heads with images of violence and exploitation of minorities and the weak. But even outside the left, we are filled with this heaviness. Life in general is a fragile and depressing thing requiring endless moments of repose and sentimentalism. There is a constant demanding for more personal responsibility because internal collapse could occur at any moment, but also a constant fear of outside predators.\u00a0This whole political orientation around fear is extremely ignoble and prevents any kind of politics based on egoism, privilege, or artistic vision. Everyone is a slave to the spirit of gravity.<\/p>\n

In The End of History and The Last Man<\/em>, Fukuyama points out that despite the ability of science to fulfill all of the survival needs of humanity, a system of political order is still required because of man\u2019s \u201cneed for recognition\u201d. He concedes that a purely materialist, economic identity is not adequate and that the wants of people are always changing. A perfect example is the entire new range of material benefits of the capitalist Western world after WWII. Most of the political and material needs of people living under the Soviet Union were fully met, but there is always something more tempting. Material goods were simply more beneficial than any guise of traditional or righteous political order the corrupt communist bureaucrats could offer.<\/p>\n

Now we are in a time where the bounds of this are pushed even further. Many are asking if there is anything more that science or technology could offer their decadent lives. The Malthusian conditions have been lifted long enough for a moment of clarity. Can there be any kind of political vision outside this endless march toward economic\/material safety?<\/p>\n

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Our Atmosphere pic.twitter.com\/5fW2mTcQY4<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 wpp\ud83c\udfad\ud83d\udd28 (@skycaptaingroyp) December 13, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n