Go Hard, Western Man, Part II

Twitter “Vitalism” Stands Against the Western Canon

For Part I, click here.

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Last article we called out the Twitter vitalists who fetishize Faustianism and going your own way as the spirit of the West. We showed how Faustianism is really a pathology best understood through the Odinic-Tyrrhic typology. And we promised that we would analyze the texts of the Western Canon to show how they are really anti-Faustian. Whereas Faustianism says “Fuck you Dad” and runs away from home, the traditional canon says “Yes, Father” and achieves nostos.

What the Western Canon Actually Says

The Twitter vitalists have a problem with “Yes, Father,” preferring individual conscience and “don’t judge my fetish.” And it is “Yes, Father,” rather than this fetish, that the great heroes of the Western Canon embody. To illustrate this ethos of obedience concretely, we will go through major epics in the Canon, starting from the beginning.

Iliad

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By Book 8 of Iliad, the Trojan war is in full swing, and the gods have all taken sides, rescued favourites, and disrupted Zeus’ well laid plans. At the outset of Book 8, the fighting has ended inconclusively, and the next morning, Zeus convenes the divine assembly. He announces that no god is to interfere further and disobedience will result in violent punishment. He alone determines the course of the war. This is the moment when the gods stop being a squabbling council. Debate ends, and command begins.

Now morn in saffron robes had shed her light
O’er all the earth, when Jove the Thunderer
Summoned the gods to council on the heights
Of many-peaked Olympus. He addressed
The assembly, and all listened as he spake:—
“Hear, all ye gods and all ye goddesses!
While I declare the thought within my breast.
Let none of either sex presume to break
The law I give, but cheerfully obey,
That my design may sooner be fulfilled.
Whoever, stealing from the rest, shall seek
To aid the Grecian cause, or that of Troy,
Back to Olympus, scourged and in disgrace,
Shall he be brought, or I will seize and hurl
The offender down to rayless Tartarus,
Deep, deep in the great gulf below the earth,
With iron gates and threshold forged of brass,
As far beneath the shades as earth from heaven.
Then shall he learn how greatly I surpass
All other gods in power. Try if ye will,
Ye gods, that all may know: suspend from heaven
A golden chain; let all the immortal host
Cling to it from below: ye could not draw,
Strive as ye might, the all-disposing Jove
From heaven to earth. And yet, if I should choose
To draw it upward to me, I should lift,
With it and you, the earth itself and sea
Together, and I then would bind the chain
Around the summit of the Olympian mount,
And they should hang aloft. So far my power
Surpasses all the power of gods and men.”

The council falls silent after this speech. No god asks “is this just?” No god evaluates his decree. The war proceeds because Zeus wills it. Law precedes reason—Zeus does not argue for the law but announces it. Obedience is expected to be cheerful, not reasoned. Zeus says not “I am right,” but “I am stronger”—and that ends the matter. This is absolute, personal, and unanswerable authority, and the gods do not object. The poem immediately notes their silence afterward. The command closes the council.

This passage shows that in the Homeric world, authority is not legitimized by goodness. Power does not answer to conscience, not even to the conscience of a god. The highest law is who commands. The gods ask not whether Zeus is right, only whether they’re bound.

What about Achilles though? Isn’t he the picture of righteous protest against a superior? Isn’t his withdrawal the archetype of a legitimate “Fuck you Dad”?

You all know the story. In Book I of Iliad, Agamemnon has taken Chryseis, daughter of the priest Chryses, who comes to ransom her. Agamemnon refuses, so Chryses’ patron god Apollo sends a plague in response, killing off large portions of the Greek army.

Achilles calls an assembly of the Achaeans, in which Calchas the seer reveals that Apollo is angry, so Chryseis must be returned. Agamemnon reluctantly agrees but demands compensation—he declares he will take Briseis, Achilles’ prize. This is the inciting incident of the action of the poem. Agamemnon asserts that as supreme commander, he may redistribute prizes. Achilles explodes, arguing that he fights hardest and gains less reward, whereas Agamemnon risks little but claims most:

Yea, well might I deserve the name
Of coward and of wretch, should I submit
In all things to thy bidding. Such commands
Lay thou on others, not on me; nor think
I shall obey thee longer. This I say,—
And bear it well in mind,—I shall not lift
My hand to keep the maiden whom ye gave
And now take from me; but whatever else
May be on board that swift black ship of mine,
Beware thou carry not away the least
Without my leave. Come, make trial now,
That these may see thy black blood bathe my spear.

First, what is not happening. Achilles and Agamemnon are not bound by personal vassalage; the expedition is collective. Nor is Achilles standing up to tyranny or modelling civic dissent. He is acting inside a heroic honour economy, not a moral-legal state.

It is also crucial to note that the two men are not part of a “folk”—Greek identity is weak in Iliad. The poem speaks of Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans, but not “Greeks” in a national sense. This is a coalition of kings—each leader commands his own contingent. Agamemnon is “king of men” (anax andron), but not sovereign over all lands represented. The expedition is a pact of war-leaders, not a nation-state army.

Agamemnon is not Achilles’ king, but he is superior in rank within the war coalition. And Achilles does not deny Agamemnon’s higher station outright; he denies that Agamemnon may humiliate him without consequence. Achilles’ anger is not about wounded pride in the modern sense, and it is certainly not about abstract rights. It is about visible status and public rank. In the Homeric world, prize-taking is political language, so Agamemnon taking Briseis is not theft, but a public degradation. Rather than rebelling against kingship, Achilles is refusing to participate in a structure that no longer honours him properly. This is not “Fuck you Dad” because Agamemnon is not his king; the two are part of a coalition, and unlike the sovereign-subject relationship, that coalition is voluntary.

We have here not a proto-liberal, conscience-driven dissenter, and we certainly do not have a Nietzschean Übermensch authoring his own moral code. Achilles is a man embedded in a rank-ordered honour world, reacting to a breach of tradition—that tradition is his real father, which he defends against an upstart. The quarrel is about defending the proper order of rank, rather than liberal anachronisms like justice in the abstract or moral rights.

Odyssey

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In Book V of Odyssey, the hero Odysseus has been wandering for years. He is shipwrecked and stranded on the island of Ogygia, where the nymph Calypso has detained him for seven years. She offers him love, pleasure, and even immortality, and yet he still wants to return to his native Ithaca. At the beginning of Book V, Athena pleads his case before Zeus, and Zeus orders Hermes to command Calypso to release him. Hermes delivers the divine order, and Calypso reluctantly agrees, but before she lets Odysseus go, she confronts him, saying, why choose hardship? Why choose a mortal wife? Why not remain here forever with me? I am more beautiful. I can make you immortal. Odysseus says:

Goddess and queen, I know that my wise Penelope
Is far less fair to look upon than thou;
For she is mortal, and thou art immortal
And knowest not age. Yet even so
I wish and long each day to see the smoke
Leap upward from my own land, and to return.

Could there be anything less Faustian?

Odysseus does not deny that Calypso is greater. He admits that she is immortal and more beautiful. Penelope is mortal and of lesser beauty. There is no illusion here. And yet “I wish and long each day to see the smoke / Leap upward from my own land.” Smoke from a hearth—that is the image. Not glory, not conquest, nor infinity, nor self-expansion. Home. Odysseus chooses wife over goddess, hearth over horizon, mortality over immortality.

Odysseus is the anti-Faust. One of the greatest heroes in all Western myth, he is not a seeker of the infinite or a romantic wanderer, but rather a man who craves the return to household authority. Wandering for him is an affliction, not a desire. He wants to RETVRN.

Aeneid

In Book IV of Aeneid, the hero Aeneas has fled Troy after its fall, wandered across the Mediterranean, and been welcomed by Queen Dido of Carthage. Dido falls deeply in love with him and Aeneas lingers in Carthage, behaving like a king there. Jupiter notices, and reminds himself that Aeneas is destined to found Rome, so he sends Mercury with his command to leave now. Aeneas prepares secretly to depart, but Dido discovers his plan, and confronts him. In response, Aeneas says:

Now even the messenger of the gods, sent by Jupiter himself,
(I swear it on both our heads), has brought the command
on the swift breeze: I saw the god himself in broad daylight
enter the city and these very ears drank of his words.
Stop rousing yourself and me with your complaints.
I do not take course for Italy of my own free will.

The last line annihilates the Faustian misreading of Aeneid. Aeneas is moving because he is commanded, not because he is driven by inner restlessness.

The speech bears all the marks of the pre-Axial. Authority is external in the form of Jupiter, who has commanded that his will be done. Crucially, there is no “why,” no reasoning, only witness: “I saw […] I heard.” Indeed, Dido’s complaints are declared irrelevant: “Stop rousing yourself and me with your complaints.” And in the end, Aeneas explicitly denies his own freedom.

Faustianism says that the horizon calls and the self must answer, but Aeneid says Jupiter calls and the self is irrelevant. Aeneas crosses seas, abandons love, endures loss—not because he wants to, but because refusal is not intelligible. This is striving across horizons, not for freedom, but for obedience. Faust chooses the “horizon,” but the horizon chooses Aeneas. Aeneid proves that world-spanning migration and founding can be Tyrrhic to the core, with no Faustian psychology at all.

Beowulf

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Thus far we have shown how the major classical epics have recognized obedience—“Yes, Father”—and not conscience—“Fuck you, Dad”—as the operative moral grammar of the West. But this does not mean that “Yes, Father” makes the father incorrigible.

Near the end of the poem, during Beowulf’s final battle, he decides that as king, it is his duty to fight the dragon himself, so he goes to confront the dragon with a band of retainers. But when the dragon emerges, the dragon’s fire overwhelms Beowulf and he is in mortal danger. At this moment, all of his retainers flee, all except one: Wiglaf. Faithful Wiglaf steps forward and rebukes the fleeing warriors, then he turns to Beowulf and says:

Beowulf dearest, do all bravely,
As in youthful days of yore thou vowedst
That while life should last thou wouldst let no wise
Thy glory droop! Now, great in deeds,
Atheling steadfast, with all thy strength
Shield thy life! I will stand to help thee.

Wiglaf is not merely exhorting Beowulf, but invoking a prior vow. Then he adds: “Shield thy life! I will stand to help thee.” It may appear that Wiglaf is giving Beowulf a sort of command, but this is still “Yes, Father” because the source of normativity remains external and anterior to Wiglaf. The “father” (lord, vow, oath, role) spoke first; the only question is, “Have you remained the man who was bound?” Whereas modern ethics says “Given new circumstances, reassess your commitments,” epic ethics says, “given new circumstances, prove your commitments.”

“Yes, Father” is not servility, but the Tyrrhic insistence on continuity of command. Authority can be wrong, but it cannot be rejudged. The only legitimate critique is: “you already swore otherwise.” That is a far more severe ethic than blind obedience—and no less alien to modern moral psychology.

Song of Roland

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Let us place ourselves in the battle of Roncevaux, during the great rearguard stand in the Song of Roland. Charlemagne’s army is withdrawing from Spain, as Roland commands the rearguard. The Saracens launch a massive ambush in the mountain pass, and the Franks are vastly outnumbered. Olivier urges Roland to blow the horn (the olifant) and call Charlemagne back for aid, but Roland refuses. Not because he wants death, but because he will not show weakness before the enemy, and will not bring shame on France.

As battle begins in earnest, Roland exhorts his men, telling them:

Man for his lord should suffer great disease,
Most bitter cold endure, and burning heat,
His hair and skin should offer up at need.
Now must we each lay on most hardily,
So evil songs neer sung of us shall be.

“Man for his lord” tells us that role precedes self. The vassal must “offer up hair and skin”, meaning that his body is pledged property, not his own private possession. Not because of abstract right, but “So evil songs ne’er sung of us shall be”: in other words, because shame and honour—not conscience—are the external criterion of judgment. Nothing here asks “is it worth it?” “is it just?” “does it align with my values?” Those questions do not exist.

Faustian “vitalists” love heat and struggle and extremity and death-adjacent language. But they hate obedience because it hurts their feelings. They refuse command. Suffering for them is only meaningful in the context of self-authorship. They judge themselves, and could not care less if they are judged by “song,” i.e. their peers. Roland accepts cold and heat, mutilation and death—pre-consciously.

Let us examine another passage, when the Saracen army has fully descended upon the Frankish rearguard. The Franks now understand that they are massively outnumbered and reinforcements are far away. They will probably not survive. Men are falling. The scale of the catastrophe is visible. At this moment, Roland and the peers are fighting at full force, and the Saracens are pressing hard. Olivier has already criticized Roland’s earlier refusal to sound the horn, and the sense of doom is beginning to thicken. In that moment Roland speaks again:

Felon he’s named that sells his body cheap!
Strike on, my lords, with burnished swords and keen;
Contest each inch your life and death between,
That neer by us Douce France in shame be steeped.
When Charles my lord shall come into this field,
Such discipline of Sarrazins he’ll see,
For one of ours he’ll find them dead fifteen;
He will not fail, but bless us all in peace.

This is an ontological declaration—it asserts that your body is not yours to dispose of. To preserve it at the cost of duty is treachery, because your life is held in tenure. To whom? To your lord. A felon sells his body cheap. That line only makes sense if your body already belongs to another and misuse of it is theft, not cowardice. What Charles owns is not merely their loyalty, but their very flesh. Hair, skin, blood, life—all are held in tenure.

And notice what gives their deaths meaning: not their inner state, nor their courage, nor their values, but this: “When Charles my lord shall come into this field […] he will bless us all in peace.” The sanction is external. They do not die for France in the abstract. They die as property under command, so that no shame-song is sung, and so that their lord may see, judge, and bless. In the Song of Roland is no conscience, no autonomy, no “why.” Just command, endurance, song. This is exactly the “Yes, Father” world that is utterly incompatible with Faustianism, liberalism, or any ethics that treats the body as self-owned capital.

“Yes, Father” is not simply the measure of right in Song of Roland, but the default condition outside of which motivation is unintelligible—even the motivation of the evil-doer. We can see this in a passage early in the poem, during the Saracen court scene in Saragossa, before the ambush at Roncevaux.

At this point, Charlemagne has been campaigning in Spain for seven years and only the city of Saragossa remains unconquered. Its ruler, King Marsile, is in council with his pagan barons. The Franks are powerful and dangerous. Marsile must decide what to do, so he proposes a plan: he will send envoys to Charlemagne, then pretend submission, offer tribute, and promise conversion, in order to delay and draw the Franks away—this is the deception that will eventually lead to the ambush. But before that deception, Marsile issues commands to his own men.

“You I command to Sarraguce to fare.

[…]

Bid him come here, his homage to declare.
To France I’ll go, and war with Charles again;
Save at my feet he kneel, and mercy beg,
Save all the laws of Christians he forget,
I’ll take away the crown from off his head.”
Answer pagans: “Sire, you say very well.”

Even the pagans are not portrayed as free agents, skeptics, or self-authors. They are bound men. “Answer pagans: ‘Sire, you say very well.’” This is a perfect closure. Command received. No protest. No “why.” We raise this because it proves something to modern readers. The poem does not oppose “Christian obedience” to “pagan freedom”—a catastrophic meme in the pagan sphere. Rather, it opposes one binding order to another binding order.

Both sides understand command and obligation as normal. Authority is always personal; submission is always expected. What differs is which lord, which law, which god—not whether command itself is legitimate. That’s why The Song of Roland works at all. A story where one side believes in obedience and the other in autonomy would be incoherent. So when moderns read this and see fanaticism on one side, villainy on the other, they’re missing the grammar of the world entirely. In the poem’s universe, a man who obeys is intelligible, but a man who asks “why?” is not. What built the West was not rebellion against authority, but a world where everyone assumed they were bound. Even the enemy.

Hagakure

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In rounding out this exploration of the Western Canon, let us compare it to something decidedly non-Western, and something beloved of the Faustian vitalist crowd—bushido, the way of the samurai. Hagakure was written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a samurai of the Nabeshima clan in Edo-period Japan—and he went hard in a way modern men can barely comprehend.

When his lord, Nabeshima Mitsushige, died, Tsunetomo wanted to follow him in death. He was commanded otherwise, so he did the next hardest thing: he renounced status, shaved his head, entered a hermitage, and dictated what became the Hagakure—a manual of absolute devotion. Tsunetomo despised clever men, ambitious men, self-preserving men. He wanted retainers who would obey without hesitation, die without complaint, and bind themselves so fully to their lord that the self disappeared. Hagakure I.9 distills this to its essence:

A true retainer is one who is, in a word,
Devoted.
Devoted to his lord, whom he follows,
Without question, without second thought.
Should his lord give him water,
and tell him that it is wine,
our retainer would get drunk.
As for judgement in moral affairs:
What his lord says is “good,” is, and
what his lord decrees is “evil,” is.
A house with but two or three such men
Serving it – its future is assured.

Though, it scarce need be said, houses wax,
and houses wane.
Powerful houses blessed by good fortune,
Never lack for bright retainers. See them now:
“Magnificent and exalted lord,” they say,
“Behold my skill, my wit, my artistry.
As surely as the sun rises,
Shall these work to your benefit.”
But not one in a thousand truly loyal!
For as soon as fortunes wane – the lord,
Aged, retires from worldly affairs, or
Passes from this world altogether –
These men of talent shall abandon him.
They are followers of fortune, and fortune,
As wisdom knows, is as fickle as the rain.
They may end up with their old lord’s son,
Or in another house, or another domain,
Three-hundred leagues hence, in the snow country.
These men – of high position or low,
Of famous wit, of renowned artistry –
Affect devoted loyalty but are cowards;
They will not abandon their lives for their lord.
This is not devotion, it is just the opposite;
The disgust it inspires cannot be concealed.

Retainers bereft of talent become peerless
The moment they resolve to live as though dead;
The moment they resolve to trade their lives
For something of higher value: The Way itself.
They become one with their lord, an instrument;
A herald, or a sword in his hand, or his flying arrow.
Reader, I myself am a living example of this.
I speak solely from hard-won experience.
When Lord Mitsushige died,
in the hall of his forebears,
I, and I alone, resolved to abandon life.
I relinquished all: Gave up my possessions,
Discarded social status, put away my sword,
Entered the temple as the lowliest monk.
Now I am satisfied merely to sing of those
Days long past, and of the purity of the Way.
(In between chanting sutras, sweeping floors,
and other duties, once so far beneath me.)
A few retainers later followed my example.
Yet others – most of the rest – and nearly all
Those who once shouted most loudly of loyalty –
Turned their backs on our lord the moment,
The very moment, he drew his last breath.

Loyalty and devotion – true loyalty and devotion –
Are said to be difficult to obtain,
challenging to hold.
Here is the truth: It is easy, it is no challenge,
It is as clear as day, I have already said it –
Resolve yourself to selfless steel-spined service,
Live as though already dead, and you have it.
Retainers of such true devotion have no equals.

This passage is “Yes, Father” in its purest, unembarrassed form. Not argued. Not justified. Not defended. Just stated as fact: What the lord says is good, is. What the lord decrees is evil, is. There is no appeal to conscience or values, reasons or principles. Outcomes do not matter—live as though you are already dead. This is ethics as command, naked and exact.

This is one of the most devastating sentences ever written against modern ethics:

Should his lord give him water, and tell him that it is wine, our retainer would get drunk.

This is the explicit rejection of truth as the ground of ethics. Truth does not bind. Command binds. That one line alone destroys Kant, Christianity, liberalism, conscience, autonomy—all of it. It is the ultimate form of objective morality.

The greatest deeds in the canon are done not by men who go their own way, but by men who follow. And we can look across the pond and respect men of an alien folk who do the same—as the Christians to the pagans in Roland.

Twitter Vitalism is Orphanhood

Faustianism is not only wrong, but less than wrong. It is nothing. Heroism is bounded by a lord, directed by a command. Inherited covenant provides exterior moral authority. Heroism orients itself toward home, not infinity. The hero does not seek the horizon, he seeks his lord’s honour. He seeks out his father’s house, and fights for the city prytaneum.

Twitter vitalism rejects command, rejects obedience, rejects bond and father. It worships motion and “becoming.” It worships the self. It is housecat energy. It struts and prowls. It licks its balls, seeking stimulation. It produces nothing enduring—no houses, no cities. It wins the loyalty of no men. Mistaking continence for weakness, it confuses sovereignty with self-expression.

Kant said that “Enlightenment” could be summarized in one word: freedom. He said it could further be summarized as the emergence of man from a self-imposed immaturity. But freedom is not maturity—indeed, it is the opposite; it is release from command, refusal of the hand. Perhaps the worst insult a Roman pagan could level was to say you had “no ancestors.” Today we worship the “self-made man” who starts from nothing, who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps. But this was a deep embarrassment to the ancient, for whom the term “new man” was a grave insult. What moderns call freedom, the ancients called orphanhood.

Back to our Faustian penguin. The fake vitalist thinks he is Odinic, but he’s not. He is a penguin walking into snow. The men of the canon did not wander into white death, but stood, obeyed, endured, returned, and died under command. That is vitalism.

The Oracle at Delphi said “know thyself”, and that means know whom you serve, know what binds you, and stand fast. That’s what makes you virile. That’s what makes you fertile. That’s what makes you a founder whose seed will flourish for 1000 years.