Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. THE MIRACLES OF DARWINISM

 Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. THE MIRACLES OF DARWINISM

1996 Interview with La Recherche

Q: What is your definition of Darwinism?

S: Darwinists argue that the double action of chance mutations and natural selection explains evolution. This general doctrine accommodates two mutually contradictory schools—gradualists on the one hand and saltationists on the other. Gradualists insist that evolution proceeds by small successive changes; saltationists that it proceeds by jumps. Richard Dawkins has come to champion radical gradualism, [the late] Stephen Jay Gould a no less radical version of saltationism.

Q: You are known as a mathematician rather than a specialist in evolutionary biology …

S: Biology is, of course, not my specialty. But biologists themselves have encouraged the participation of mathematicians in the overall assessment of evolutionary thought, if only because they have presented such an irresistible target. Richard Dawkins, for example, has been fatally attracted to arguments that hinge on concepts drawn from mathematics and computer science—arguments which he then, with all his comic authority, imposes on innocent readers. Mathematicians are, in any case, epistemological zealots. It is normal for them to bring their critical scruples to the foundations of other disciplines. And finally, it is worth observing that the great turbid wave of cybernetics has carried mathematicians from their normal mid-ocean haunts to the far shores of evolutionary biology. There, up ahead, René Thom and Ilya Prigogine may be observed paddling sedately toward dry land, members of the Santa Fe Institute thrashing in their wake. Stuart Kauffman is among them.  An interesting case, a physician half in love with mathematical logic, burdened now and forever by having received a papal kiss from Murray Gell-Mann. This ecumenical movement has endeavored to apply the concepts of mathematics to the fundamental problems of evolution—the interpretation of functional complexity, for example.

Q: What do you mean by functional complexity?

S: It is impossible to grasp the phenomenon of life without that concept, the two words each expressing a crucial idea. The laboratory biologists’ normal and unforced vernacular is almost always couched in functional terms: the function of an eye, the function of an enzyme, or a ribosome, or the fruit fly’s antennae. Functional language matches up perfectly with biological reality. Physiologists see this better than anyone else. Within their world, everything is a matter of function, the various systems that they study—circulatory, digestive, excretory, and the like—all characterized in simple, ineliminable functional terms. At the level of molecular biology, functionality may seem to pose certain conceptual problems, perhaps because the very notion of an organ has disappeared when biological relationships are specified in biochemical terms. But appearances are misleading. Certain functions remain even in the absence of an organ or organ systems. Complexity is also a crucial concept. Even among unicellular organisms, the mechanisms involved in the separation and fusion of chromosomes during mitosis and meiosis are processes of unbelievable complexity and subtlety. Organisms present themselves to us as a complex ensemble of functional interrelationships. If one is going to explain their evolution, one must at the same time explain their functionality and their complexity.

Q: What is it that makes functional complexity so difficult to comprehend?

S: The evolution of living creatures appears to require an essential ingredient, a specific form of organization. Whatever it is, it lies beyond anything that our present knowledge of physics or chemistry might suggest. It is a property upon which formal logic sheds absolutely no light. Whether gradualists or saltationists, Darwinians have too simple a conception of biology, rather like a locksmith misguidedly convinced that his handful of keys will open any lock. Darwinians, for example, tend to think of the gene as if it were the expression of a simple command: do this, get that done, drop that side chain. Walter Gehring’s work on  the regulatory genes controlling the development of the insect eye reflects this conception. The relevant genes may well function this way, but the story on this level is surely incomplete, and Darwinian theory is not apt to fill in the pieces.

Q: You claim that biologists think of a gene as a command. Could you be more specific?

S: Schematically, a gene is like a unit of information. It has simple binary properties. A sequence of gene instructions resembles a sequence of instructions specifying a recipe. Consider again the example of the eye. Darwinists imagine that it requires—what? A thousand or two thousand genes to assemble an eye, the specification of the organ thus requiring one or two thousand units of information? That is absurd! Suppose a European firm proposes to manufacture an entirely new household appliance in a Southeast Asian factory. And suppose that for commercial reasons the firm does not wish to communicate to the factory any details of the appliance’s function, like how it works or what purposes it will serve. With only a few thousand bits of information, the factory is not going to proceed very far or very fast. A few thousand bits of information, after all, yields only a single paragraph of text. The appliance in question is bound to be vastly simpler than the eye. Charged with its manufacture, the factory will yet need to know the significance of the operations to which they have committed themselves in engaging their machinery. This can be achieved only if they already have some sense of the object’s nature before they undertake to manufacture it. A considerable body of knowledge, held in common between the European firm and its Asian factory, is necessary before manufacturing instructions may be executed.

Q: Would you argue that the genome does not contain the requisite information for explaining organisms?

S: It does not, according to the understanding of the genome we now possess. The biological properties invoked by biologists are in this respect quite insufficient. While biologists may understand that a gene triggers the production of a particular protein, that knowledge—that kind of knowledge—does not allow them to comprehend how one or two thousand genes suffice to direct the course of embryonic development.

 Q: You are going to be accused of preformationism …

S: And of many other crimes. My position is nevertheless a strictly rational one. I’ve formulated a problem that appears significant to me: How is it that with so few elementary instructions the materials of life can fabricate objects that are so marvelously complicated and efficient? This remarkable property with which they are endowed—just what is its nature? Nothing within our actual knowledge of physics and chemistry allows us intellectually to grasp it. If one starts from an evolutionary point of view, it must be acknowledged that in one manner or another the earliest fish contained the capacity, and the appropriate neural wiring, to bring into existence organs which they did not possess or even need, but which would be the common property of their successors when they left the water for the firm ground, or for the air.

Q: You assert that, in fact, Darwinism doesn’t explain much.

S: It seems to me that the union of chance mutation and selection has a certain descriptive value. But in no case does the description count as an explanation. Darwinism relates ecological data to the relative abundance of species and environments. In any case, the descriptive value of Darwinian models is pretty limited. Besides, as saltationists have indicated, the gradualist thesis seems totally ridiculous in light of our growing knowledge of paleontology. The miracles of saltationism, on the other hand, cannot discharge the mystery I have described.

Q: Let’s return to natural selection. Isn’t it the case that despite everything the idea has a certain explanatory value?

S: No one could possibly deny the general thesis that stability is a necessary condition for existence. This is the real content of the doctrine of natural selection. The outstanding application of this general principle is Berthollet’s laws in elementary chemistry. In a desert, the species that die rapidly are those that require water the most. Yet that does not explain the appearance among the survivors of those structures whose particular features permit them to resist aridity. The thesis of natural selection is not very powerful. Except for certain artificial cases, we remain unable to predict whether this or that species or this or that variety will be favored or not as the result of changes in the environment. What we can do is establish the effects of natural selection after the fact—to show, for example, that certain birds are disposed to eat this species of  snails less often than other species, perhaps because their shell is not as visible. That’s ecology. To put it another way, natural selection is a weak instrument of proof because the phenomena subsumed by natural selection are obvious. They establish nothing from the point of view of the theory.

Q: Isn’t the significant explanatory feature of Darwinian theory the connection established between chance mutations and natural selection?

S: With the discovery of genetic coding, we have come to understand that a gene is like a word composed in the DNA alphabet. Such words form the genomic text and tell the cell to make this or that protein. Either a given protein is structural, or it works in combination with other signals from the genome to fabricate yet another protein. All the experimental results we know fall within this scheme. The following scenario then becomes standard: A gene undergoes a mutation, one that may facilitate the reproduction of those individuals carrying it; over time, and with respect to a specific environment, mutants come to be statistically favored, replacing individuals lacking the requisite mutation. But evolution cannot simply be the accumulation of such typographical errors. Population geneticists can study the speed with which a favorable mutation propagates itself under these circumstances. They do this with a lot of skill, but these are academic exercises, if only because none of the parameters that they use can be empirically determined. In addition, there are the obstacles I have already mentioned. We know the number of genes in an organism. There are about one hundred thousand for a higher vertebrate. This we know fairly well. But this seems grossly insufficient to explain the incredible quantity of information needed to accomplish evolution within a given line of species.

Q: A concrete example?

S: Darwinists say that horses, which once were as small as rabbits, increased their size to escape more quickly from predators. Within the gradualist model, one might isolate a specific trait—increase in body size—and consider it to be the result of a series of typographic changes. The explanatory effect achieved is rhetorical, imposed entirely by the trick of insisting that what counts for an herbivore is the speed of its flight when faced by a predator. Now this may even be partially true, but there are no biological grounds that permit us to determine that this is  in fact the decisive consideration. After all, increase in body size may well have a negative effect. Darwinists seem to me to have preserved a mechanistic vision of evolution, one that prompts them to observe merely a linear succession of causes and effects. The idea that causes may interact with one another is now standard in mathematical physics; it is a point that has had difficulty penetrating the carapace of biological thought. In fact, within the quasi-totality of observable phenomena, local changes interact dramatically. After all, there is hardly an issue of La Recherche that does not contain an allusion to the Butterfly Effect. Information theory is precisely the domain that sharpens our intuitions about these phenomena. A typographical change in a computer program does not change it just a little. It wipes the program out, purely and simply. It is the same with a telephone number. If I intend to call a correspondent by telephone, it doesn’t much matter if I am fooled by one, two, three or eight figures in his number.

Q: You accept the idea that biological mutations genuinely have the character of typographical errors?

S: Yes, in the sense that one base is a template for another, one codon for another. But at the level of biochemical activity, one is no longer able properly to speak of typography. There is an entire grammar for the formation of proteins in three dimensions, one that we understand poorly. We do not have at our disposal physical or chemical rules permitting us to construct a mapping from typographical mutations or modifications to biologically effective structures. To return to the example of the eye: a few thousand genes are needed for its fabrication, but each in isolation signifies nothing. What is significant is the combination of their interactions. These cascading interactions, with their feedback loops, express an organization whose complexity we do not know how to analyze. It is possible we may be able to do so in the future, but there is no doubt that we are unable to do so now. Gehring has recently discovered a segment of DNA which is involved both in the development of the vertebrate eye and which can also induce the development of an eye in the wing of a butterfly. His work comprises a demonstration of something utterly astonishing, but not an explanation.

Q: But Dawkins, for example, believes in the possibility of a cumulative process.

S: Dawkins believes in an effect that he calls “the cumulative selection  of beneficial mutations.” To support his thesis, he resorts to a metaphor introduced by the mathematician Emile Borel—that of a monkey typing by chance and in the end producing a work of literature. It is a metaphor, I regret to say, embraced by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helix. Dawkins has his computer write a series of thirty letters, these corresponding to the number of letters in a verse by Shakespeare. He then proceeds to simulate the Darwinian mechanism of chance mutations and selection. His imaginary monkey types and retypes the same letters, the computer successively choosing the phrase that most resembles the target verse. By means of cumulative selection, the monkey reaches its target in forty or sixty generations.

Q: But you don’t believe that a monkey typing on a typewriter, even aided by a computer …

S: This demonstration is bogus. Dawkins doesn’t even describe precisely how it proceeds. At the beginning of the exercise, randomly generated phrases appear rapidly to approach the target; the closer the approach, the more the process begins to slow. It is the action of mutations in the wrong direction that pulls things backward. In fact, a simple argument shows that unless the numerical parameters are chosen deliberately, the progression begins to bog down completely.

Q: You would say that the model of cumulative selection, imagined by Dawkins, is out of touch with palpable biological realities?

S: Exactly. Dawkins’s model lays entirely to the side the triple problems of complexity, functionality, and their interaction.

Q: You are a mathematician. Suppose that you try, despite your reservations, to formalize the concept of functional complexity.

S: I would appeal to a notion banned by the scientific community, but one understood perfectly by everyone else—that of a goal. As a computer scientist, I could express this in the following way. One constructs a space within which one of the coordinates serves in effect as the thread of Ariadne, guiding the trajectory toward the goal. Once the space is constructed, the system evolves in a mechanical way toward its goal. But look, the construction of the relevant space cannot proceed until a preliminary analysis has been carried out, one in which the set of all possible trajectories is assessed and their average distance from the specified  goal is estimated. Such a preliminary analysis is beyond the reach of empirical study. It presupposes that the biologist (or computer scientist) knows the totality of the situation, the properties of the ensemble of trajectories. Yet in terms of mathematical logic, the nature of this space is entirely enigmatic. It is crucial to remember that the conceptual problems we face in trying to explain life, life has entirely solved. Indeed, the systems embodied in living creatures are entirely successful in reaching their goals. The trick involved in Dawkins’s embarrassing example arises from his surreptitious introduction of a relevant space. His computer program calculates from a random phrase to a target, a calculation that corresponds to nothing in biological reality. The function that he employs flatters the imagination, however, because its apparent simplicity elicits naïve approval. In biological reality, the space of even the simplest function has a complexity that defies understanding, and indeed defies any and all calculations.

Q: Even when they dissent from Darwin, the saltationists are more moderate: they don’t pretend to hold the key that would permit them to explain evolution.

S: Before we discuss the saltationists, however, I must say a word about the Japanese biologist Motoo Kimura. He has shown that the majority of mutations are neutral, without any selective effect. For Darwinians upholding the central Darwinian thesis, this is embarrassing.… The saltationist view, revived by Stephen Jay Gould, in the end represents an idea of Richard Goldschmidt’s. In 1940 or so, Goldschmidt postulated the existence of very intense mutations, no doubt involving hundreds of genes, and taking place rapidly, in less than one thousand generations, thus below paleontology’s threshold of resolution. Curiously enough, Gould does not seem concerned to preserve the union of chance mutations and selection. The saltationists run afoul of two types of criticism. On the one hand, the functionality of their supposed macromutations is inexplicable within the framework of molecular biology. On the other hand, Gould ignores in silence the great trends in biology, such as the increasing complexity of the nervous system. He imagines that the success of new, more sophisticated species, such as the mammals, is a contingent phenomenon. He is not in a position to offer an account of the essential movement of evolution, or at the least an account of its main trajectories. The saltationists are thus reduced to invoking two types of miracles: macromutations as well as the great trajectories of evolution.

 Q: In what sense are you employing the word “miracle”?

S: A miracle is an event that should appear impossible to a Darwinian in view of its ultra-cosmological improbability within the framework of his own theory. Now, speaking of macromutations, let me observe that to generate a proper elephant, it will not suffice suddenly to endow it with a full-grown trunk. As the trunk is being organized, a different but complementary system—the cerebellum—must be modified in order to establish a place for the ensemble of wiring that the elephant will require in order to use the trunk. These macromutations must be coordinated by a system of genes in embryogenesis. If one considers the history of evolution, we must postulate thousands of miracles; miracles, in fact, without end. No more than the gradualists, the saltationists are unable to provide an account of those miracles. The second category of miracles are directional, offering instruction to the great evolutionary progressions and trends—the elaboration of the nervous system, of course, but the internalization of the reproductive process as well, and the appearance of bone, the emergence of ears, the enrichment of various functional relationships, and so on. Each is a series of miracles, whose accumulation has the effect of increasing the complexity and efficiency of various organisms. From this point of view, the notion of bricolage [tinkering], introduced by François Jacob, involves a fine turn of phrase, but one concealing an utter absence of explanation.

Q: The appearance of human beings—is that a miracle, in the sense you mean?

S: Naturally. And here it does seem that there are voices among contemporary biologists—I mean voices other than mine—who might cast doubt on the Darwinian paradigm, which has so dominated discussion for the past twenty years. Gradualists and saltationists alike are completely incapable of providing a convincing explanation of the near simultaneous emergence of a number of biological systems that distinguish human beings from the higher primates: bipedalism, with the concomitant modification of not only the pelvis but also the cerebellum; a much more dexterous hand, with fingerprints conferring an especially fine tactile sense; the modifications of the pharynx, which permit phonation; and the modification of the central nervous system, notably at the level of the temporal lobes, permitting the specific recognition of speech. From the point of view of embryogenesis, such anatomical systems are completely different from one another. Each modification constitutes a gift,  a bequest from a primate family to its descendants. It is astonishing that these gifts should have developed simultaneously. Some biologists speak of a predisposition of the genome. Can anyone actually recover the predisposition, supposing that it actually existed? Was it present in the first of the fish? Confronted with such questions, the Darwinian paradigm is conceptually bankrupt.

Q: You mentioned the Santa Fe school earlier in our discussion. Do appeals to such notions as chaos …

S: What we have here are highly competent people inventing poetic but essentially hollow forms of expression. I am referring in part to the hoopla surrounding cybernetics. And beyond that, there lie the dissipative structures of Prigogine, or the systems of Varela, or, moving to the present, Stuart Kauffman’s edge of chaos—an organized form of inanity that is certain soon to make its way to France. The Santa Fe school takes complexity and applies it to absolutely everything. They draw their representative examples from certain chemical reactions, the pattern of the seacoast, atmospheric turbulence, or the structure of a chain of mountains. The complexity of these structures is certainly considerable, but in comparison with the living world, they exhibit in every case an impoverished form of organization, one that is strictly non-functional. No algorithm allows us to understand the complexity of living creatures. These examples owe their initial plausibility to the assumption that the physico-chemical world exhibits functional properties that in reality it does not possess.

Q: Should one take your position as a statement of resignation, an appeal to have greater modesty, or something else altogether?

S: Speaking ironically, I might say that all we can hear at the present time is the great anthropic hymnal, with even a number of mathematically sophisticated scholars keeping time, as the great hymn is intoned, by tapping their feet. The rest of us should, of course, practice a certain suspension of judgment.

UNCOMMON DISSENT

Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing

Edited by William A. Dembski

Death and the meaning of life

 Let death be your greatest teacher.

—Buddha

(Unfound in Pali Canon, but not in contradiction with it)

DEATH, RISK, AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

What lies beyond this life? Heaven? Hell? An endless cycle of rebirth? Simple nothingness? Opinions abound, but it’s all speculation: No one knows. I’ve watched good people die, and I can attest that, more often than not, the final moment doesn’t seem very pleasant. If life is a song, it ends in a minor key. 

If we take it seriously—that is, if we don’t avert our eyes from the truth that we have an expiration date similar to a carton of eggs—then death becomes the most powerful teacher that we can ever hope for. If we think of death in Wedge terms, our assured demise is the ultimate stressor, and thus our motivation to make choices that mean something. Death is the stake that all of us are born with. No matter our triumphs or failures, death will always be waiting. With the end inevitable, it’s only our choices that matter. 

In other words, life is the wedge between birth and death.

I sometimes think of life as being the captain of a small boat bobbing up and down on choppy seas. We steer our vessels into waves, or around them. Sometimes we navigate into placid lagoons, and other times we push our limits and challenge the high seas. And while we can never predict what the ocean will throw at us, every sailor knows that when you’re caught in a storm and see a massive wave start to form, there’s one option. You turn the bow directly into the threat and hold fast on the rudder until you make it over the top or let it take you down into the depths. Running from a rogue wave almost always invites disaster. But it takes courage to face doom head on. Only the bold can hope to make it through.

This is why the Wedge is so powerful. We always have one choice in the face of life’s obstacles. We can follow reactions that are already hardwired into our body’s physiological responses, or, for better or worse, resist those urges and will ourselves onto a different path. Either way, life’s challenges—the crests and valleys of that turbulent ocean—are the stakes that define what we’re made of. The decisions we make in the face of death are what make us real. 

We may not always think about our death, but we sense death constantly on a cellular level. Evolution gave us this morbid gift. We are built to propagate the species. Every hormonal response, reflex, sensation and cognitive ability exists to serve this purpose. Every emotion, from fear, love and happiness to sadness, ambivalence and ennui, confers critical information that helps us stay alive.

Even so, our nervous systems can really only issue two commands: tension or release. This is the interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic wiring. In a moment of crisis, we can engage all of our physical and emotional powers to combat the situation we’re in, or we can relax and let the chaotic forces do with us as they will. At some point our personal powers have limits. There’s only so much that any of us can do. In the battle of man versus nature, nature always wins. 

In the beginning of this book, I wrote that evolution seeks to preserve experiences. It’s not a meaningless cycle of birth, reproduction and death. We struggle against challenges because they’re worth struggling against. We feel happiness, sadness, anger, fear and lust because those are inherently meaningful. 

The great spiritual adept Eckhart Tolle once wrote: “You are not in the universe, you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself.” The miracle of being alive is that you have a very specific perspective on things both larger and smaller than yourself. It might be just one of an infinite number of perspectives, but it’s special because it’s yours. You’re responsible for how you want to live your life, and all the while, you know that every action you choose either moves you closer or further from the end. 

This is why it’s so important to take death seriously. It’s why death is so beautiful. No decision you make will ever make it possible to avoid death. Which, in a strange way, means that the whole idea of risk is something of an illusion. If avoiding death was the goal, then we’ve already lost the game. But what if the point of being alive was instead to experience the entire bounty of human emotion, failure, triumphs, love and loss? To my mind, the goal of life isn’t to live as long as possible, but rather to find our true selves as a reflection of the world that we inhabit. It’s to test our mettle and resolve as we race to make the most of the time we do have. 

Most of the experiences I’ve written about in this book are dangerous in one way or another. An errant kettlebell could land on a foot; a person could overheat in a sauna, fall into hypothermia in the ice or suffer hypoxia while holding their breath. Never mind the universe of unknown drug interactions with traditional medicines and illicit drugs. There’s no doubt that at least something I’ve written in the last few hundred pages has made you pause and wonder if any of this is really a good idea. And, honestly, as a writer far removed from your own personal circumstances, I can’t make that call for you. All I can say is that taking these risks have made me healthier, happier and stronger. I am more at peace with life because of the journey of reporting and writing this book. I’ve accepted that I don’t have any control on how things end up. I just have control of how I get there.

A person can choose a life path of muted sensations, avoiding pain and living indoors protected by a cocoon of technological comfort. That person can work a 40-hour work week, fully fund a retirement plan, carry acceptable insurance, dutifully pay taxes, have a few children and ultimately die comfortably in bed. This is the default life plan that many Americans follow. But it’s not as risk-free as it seems. On the one hand, we all risk the ordinary misfortunes of the modern world: cancer, car accidents, heartbreak, economic downturns and bankruptcy. On the other, by pathologically avoiding failure, we can miss out on the opportunity for unexpected rewards. The great paradox of life is that there’s no obvious meaning to it. And so we need to supply our own meaning. If we don’t, then life itself becomes unlivable. Purposeless. 

Success doesn’t happen if you only act when you are sure of a positive outcome. Real success means risking failure. We succeed only after we accept that we might fail and plan for the worst.

On a neurological level, the anticipation of failure is stress. When a person enters into an ice-cold bath, the first thing they feel is a desire to clench up and protect themselves. In a sauna, they want to escape the heat. Facing down a flying kettlebell, a person might cringe at the thought of it crashing onto their feet, and before an ayahuasca ceremony, it’s entirely reasonable to fear going insane. These are all innate responses predicting some sort of bodily harm. They’re sensations and emotions that we’ve trained into our neurology or inherited from a long line of evolutionary succession. However, when we tackle those sensations head on, when we insert a wedge into the space between stimulus and response, we don’t just become better kettlebell throwers, sauna endurers and plant imbibers. Facing those challenges makes us more robust, healthier and more capable of just about anything.

Indeed, it’s our anticipation of the worst possible outcomes that gets in the way more often than not. We envision negative consequences for our actions. And yet more often than not, a missed kettlebell lands safely on the grass, a sauna relaxes us, and an ice bath brings alertness. For me, the ayahuasca ceremony gave me a new perspective and answered questions that I didn’t even know I had about the deep bonds I have in my marriage, my connection to a lineage of ancestors and my vulnerability to electronic addictions. 

I began this journey by accepting the possibility of catastrophe. I knew my inquiry might lead nowhere. I also knew I might get injured or even die while seeking answers. But I kept going. I pushed through. Despite some doubts along the way, I believed I would come out the other side better, stronger and more resilient, that my life would be richer for it. When I think about my own death—no matter how I end up meeting it—I want to know that my choices made a difference. I do not want to have my final moments consumed by the notion that I was passive when I could have been active. Of course, I know that if I do this kind of work long enough, it’s likely that I’ll get hurt at some point. But that doesn’t mean the journey won’t be worth it.

This book and the wedges I’ve introduced are the tip of an iceberg. They’re exercises, practices and ideas that speak especially strongly to me. They’re examples of challenges that I needed to try, stressors that I needed to push up against in order to grow. Some of these wedges showed me powerful new ways to enter into a flow state. Others let me reprogram patterns in my nervous system. But it was my journey. Your life—the time between birth and death that the gods grant you—is your journey. It’s your Wedge. What you do with this opportunity is up to you. 

And just maybe, somewhere on your journey you will catch hold of that thread that connects the choices of every iteration of every Russian doll to a consciousness that none of the parts can comprehend on its own. In this way, we can all be individuals and the universe at the same time. 

Scott Carney

The Wedge

“Oh bliss! Oh bliss!”

 

Attached to Bhikkhu or homo monasticus

The occasion was this. The Blessed One was staying at Anupiyā—there is a town of the Mallians’ called Anupiyā—and by that time many well-known Sakyan princes had gone forth under the Blessed One. But there were two brothers, Mahānāma the Sakyan and Anuruddha the Sakyan. Anuruddha had been delicately brought up. He had three palaces, one for the summer, one for the rains and one for the winter. For four months he would be entertained in the rains palace by minstrels with no men among them and never come down to the lower palace.

It occured to Mahānāma: “Now many well-known Sakyan princes have gone forth under the Blessed One. But no one in our family has gone forth from the house life into homelessness. Suppose I went forth, or Anuruddha?”

Then he went to Anuruddha and told him what had occurred to him. Anuruddha said: “But I have been delicately brought up. I cannot go forth from the home life into homelessness. You go forth.”

“Come then, Anuruddha, I shall instruct you in the household life. Now first a field must be ploughed, then it must be sown, then water must be led into it, then the water must be drained, then the field must be weeded, then the crop must be cut, then it must be gathered in, then it must be stacked, then it must be threshed, then the straw must be removed, then the chaff must be winnowed off, then it must be sifted, then it must be stored away. Now when that is done, it must all be done again next year, and the year after. The work never finishes; there is no end to the work.”

“Then when will there be an end to the work? When shall we have the leisure to gratify the five strands of the sensual desires we are provided and furnished with?”

“My dear Anuruddha, the work never finishes; there is no end to the work. Our father and our grandfather both died while their work was still unfinished. So now it is for you to learn about this household life. I shall go forth from the home life into homelessness.”

Anuruddha went to his mother and told her: “Mother, I want to go forth from the home life into homelessness. Please give me your permission.”

When this was said, she told him: “You two sons of mine are dear and precious to me, not repugnant. In case of your death we should lose you against our will; but why should I give you my permission to go forth from the house life into homelessness while you are still living?” He asked a second and a third time. Then his mother said: “My dear Anuruddha, if Bhaddiya the royal Sakyan who is governing the Sakyans goes forth, you may do so too.” 5

Now Bhaddiya the royal Sakyan who was governing the Sakyans at the time was a friend of Anuruddha’s and his mother had thought: “This Bhaddiya is a friend of Anuruddha’s. He is not anxious to go forth from the home life,” which is why she had spoken as she did.

Then Anuruddha went to Bhaddiya and said: “My going forth depends on yours.”

“If your going forth depends on mine, then let it no longer be so. You and I will … well, you go forth when you like.”

“Come, let us both go forth together from the house life into homelessness.”

“I cannot. I will do anything else for you that I can. You go forth.”

“My mother has said: ‘My dear Anuruddha, if Bhaddiya the royal Sakyan who is governing the Sakyans goes forth, you may go forth too.’ And your words were these: ‘If your going forth depends on mine, then let it no longer be so. You and I will … well, you go forth when you like.’ Come, let us both go forth from the home life into homelessness.”

At that time people used to speak the truth, used to keep their word. Bhaddiya told Anuruddha: “Wait seven years. At the end of seven years both of us shall go forth.”

“Seven years is too long. I cannot wait seven years.”

“Wait six years. At the end of six years both of us shall go forth.”

“Six years is too long. I cannot wait six years.”

“Wait five years … four … three … two years … one year … seven months … two months … one month …. Wait half a month. At the end of half a month both of us shall go forth.”

“Half a month is too long. I cannot wait half a month.”

“Wait seven days. At the end of seven days both of us shall go forth. And so I can hand over the kingdom to my children and my brothers.”

“Seven days is not too long. I shall wait.”

Then Bhaddiya the royal Sakyan and Anuruddha and Ānanda and Bhagu and Kimbila and Devadatta, with Upāli the barber as seventh, set out leading a four-constituent army as though to the parade ground in the pleasure park as they were used to do. When they had gone some distance, they dismissed the army. Then they went across the border to another realm where they took off their insignia. They rolled them in an upper robe, and they told Upāli the barber: “Upāli, you had better go back. There is enough here for you to live on.”

Now on his way Upāli thought: “These Sakyans are fierce. With this they might even have me put to death as an abettor in the princes’ going forth. So these Sakyan princes are now going forth; but how about me?” He opened the bundle and hung the things on a tree, saying: “Let him who sees these take them as given.” Then   he went back to the Sakyan princes. They saw him coming, and they asked him: “Why have you returned?”

He told them what had happened, and he added: “And so I have come back again.”

“You did well not to go home, Upāli; for the Sakyans are fierce. With this they might even have had you put to death as an abettor in the Sakyan princes’ going forth.”

Then the Sakyan princes went with Upāli the barber to the Blessed One, and after paying homage to him, they sat down at one side. When they had done so, they said to the Blessed One: “Lord, we are proud Sakyans. This Upāli the barber has long attended on us. Let the Blessed One give him the going forth first so that we can pay homage to him and rise up for him and give him reverential salutation and honour. Thus the Sakyan pride will be humbled in us Sakyans.” Then the Blessed One gave the going forth first to Upāli the barber and afterwards to the Sakyan princes.

It was in the course of that rainy season that the venerable Bhaddiya realized the three true knowledges. The venerable Anuruddha aroused the divine eye. The venerable Ānanda realized the fruition of stream-entry. Devadatta produced the ordinary man’s supernormal powers.

At this time whenever the venerable Bhaddiya went into the forest or to the root of a tree or to a room that was void, he was constantly exclaiming: “Oh bliss! Oh bliss!”

A number of bhikkhus went to the Blessed One and told him about it, adding: “There seems no doubt, Lord, that the venerable Bhaddiya is leading the holy life dissatisfied. Or he is remembering his former position as ruler.”

Then the Blessed One sent for him and asked him if it was true.

“It is so, Lord.”

“But, Bhaddiya, what good do you see in doing this?” “Formerly, Lord, when I had royal status there was a well-posted guard both inside and outside the palace, and also both inside and outside the city, and also both inside and outside the district. Even though I was so guarded and protected, I was fearful, anxious, suspicious and worried. But now, Lord, when I am gone to the forest or to the root of a tree or to a room that is void, I am not fearful or anxious or suspicious or worried. I live at ease, in quiet,   dependent on others’ gifts, with a mind like a wild deer. This is the good that I see in doing this.”

Knowing the meaning of this, the Blessed One then uttered this exclamation:

Who has no longer conflict lurking in him

Will have surmounted all the kinds of being;

For he is fearless, blissful, free from sorrow.

No deity can vie with him in glory.

Vin. Cv. 7:1; cf. Ud. 2:10

FIRST VOICE. Now the venerable Nanda, the Blessed One’s half-brother, put on pressed and ironed robes, and he anointed his eyes and took a glazed bowl. Then he went to the Blessed One, and after paying homage to him, he sat down at one side. When he had done so, the Blessed One told him: “Nanda, it is not proper that you, a clansman who has gone forth out of faith from the house life into homelessness, should put on pressed and ironed robes, anoint your eyes and take a glazed bowl. What is proper for you, a clansman who has gone forth out of faith from the house life into homelessness, is to be a forest dweller, an eater only of almsfood got by begging, a wearer of refuse-rag robes, and to dwell without regard for sensual desires.”

S. 2I:8

Book on remigration

 Foreword  by Martin Sellner

Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. And the time for remigration has clearly arrived! This term, now on everyone’s lips around the world, was first coined in France as a political rallying cry by the Identitarians. Like so many revolutionary ideas, the concept of remigration springs from the Gallic spirit. The decisive notion at the heart of the diagnosis — that of the “Great Replacement” — has already been formulated by Renaud Camus, a representative of this revolutionary people.

This “replacement migration” which the globalist establishment cynically presents as a “solution for aging societies” is in reality an unprecedented political crime with devastating consequences. This transformation of European nation-states into Islamized, multi-ethnic entities constitutes an historic catastrophe unique in its kind. It erodes the irreplaceable “social capital” founded on relative ethnocultural homogeneity. The mass naturalization of unassimilated migrants raises the question of “ethnic voting.” Demography devours democracy: we are losing our right to self-determination, and with it the possibility of a turning point. If we do not stop this process and reverse it, Europeans will become minorities in their own countries.

This diagnosis has united the European right since the beginning of the 21st century. The common enemy has given us, as Carl Schmitt put it, a figure. The question of population replacement has given rise to a community of destiny that transcends national borders. But what this identitarian and international movement long lacked was a unifying rallying cry, a clear objective toward which everything could converge. Thus came the hour of remigration.

It is profoundly significant that the rise of this idea is the fruit of a collective European effort. In the autumn of 2015, the slogan appeared for the first time on a banner in eastern Austria. Alongside fifty activists, we stood against the flood and blocked one of the routes through which millions of illegal migrants were being funneled into the heart of Europe.

The success of the term “remigration” is that of applied metapolitics. While the old New Right long contented itself with speaking of a right-wing Gramscianism, the Identitarians, from 2012 onward, put it into practice. Words are weapons, but they must first be forged. An idea becomes a blade for the mind when it is carried into the streets, painted on banners, broadcast in videos, and proclaimed through actions. The aura of political ideas must be charged through deeds. Years of tireless work, thousands of flyers, dozens of banners, and the idealism of hundreds of young women and men across Europe were indispensable to bring “remigration” out of the niche of patriotic circles and propel it right into the heart of public debate.

Millions of people now understand the same thing when they hear this term: with “remigration,” in 50 years, France will become more French again, Germany more German, and Europe more European than it is today. Remigration is therefore more than a political program. It is a mobilizing myth and a vector of unity. As the lowest common denominator, it directs, just like the lambda of the Identitarian movement, patriots from all European countries toward the same point of convergence.

Remigration is so essential because it constitutes an axis. It is the junction point between activists and political leaders, progressive dreamers and conservative pragmatists. It is the axis that links party politics to counterculture. Boomers and zoomers, men and women, Christians and pagans, socialists and libertarians find themselves united and strengthened around remigration.

What unites them is this unshakeable certainty: either remigration becomes the central axis of the political agenda, or tomorrow there will simply be no more German, Italian, or European politics.

Unlike defensive conservatives’ incessant complaints about migrant violence, cultural decline, or Islamization, the rallying cry of remigration is not limited to mere observation. It is a call to action. This is where it becomes a mobilizing myth.

Sorel writes: “The myth is not a description of things, but the expression of a will by which a man or a group gathers to act.” In other words, myths do not explain the world, but rather drive men to transform it. Compilations of facts about demographic replacement may shock us, but only myths like that of remigration inspire political action.

Why, then, do we need books on remigration? Activism in the streets and on the Internet needs to be supported by theoretical work. As Alex Kurtagić wrote: “A slogan on a poster, a punchy formula […] all rest on a theory: they are distilled from complex concepts and value systems belonging to an abstract level. Millions of words are written before a banner is unfurled, before a slogan appears in a discussion.” With my book, I was able to offer a contribution from the German-speaking world.1  With Jean-Yves Le Gallou, it is now a Frenchman who in turn presents his own conception, thus completing the loop in the elaboration of this notion.

With typically French clarity and a brilliant command of language, he examines the phenomenon from every angle. He considers both the legitimacy of remigration based on our several-thousand-year-old European history and its logistical and legal feasibility. On the decisive points, our conceptions of remigration fully coincide. We demand the immediate halt of all new immigration (“the great pause”), the expulsion of illegal migrants and criminals, the dismantling of parallel societies, and the fight against Islamization. When it comes to the sensitive question that “moderate” right-wing leaders often avoid, Jean-Yves Le Gallou does not mince words. Unassimilated, hostile citizens who have been wrongly naturalized constitute a problem that a serious remigration policy cannot evade. Le Gallou naturally respects the principles of the rule of law and shows that there are many constitutional paths to exert pressure on such hostile parallel communities.

This manifesto is all the more valuable because its author is one of vast erudition and reasons on the scale of millennia. He deepens the foundation of the legitimacy of remigration and specifies the political-legal implications necessary for its implementation. In the 21st century, remigration is morally anchored in the unbroken historical continuity of European peoples on their continent. A line unfolds over more than 40,000 years: from the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) to the Yamnaya, to the Early European Farmers (EEF). Expressed by a Frenchman, this decried — even “heretical” — message may perhaps be more easily receivable to a German audience: “We are the indigenous people of Europe.”

The “JUGEXIT” is also a decisive contribution to the theory of remigration. The dictatorship of judges is targeted without restraint. With striking clarity, this book explains how the invocation of the “rule of law,” when diverted from its meaning, becomes in reality a double negation of national sovereignty and popular sovereignty. A caste of judges, never directly elected, permeated by a progressive and globalist ideology, has seized control of migration policy. This is a coup d’état which has wrested from millions of Europeans control over their borders and their people.

This “government of judges” systematically obstructs deportations by ignoring — to the benefit of migrants — threats to public safety. It blocks laws aimed at limiting family reunification or combating welfare abuse. This dictatorship of judges transforms Europe into a ship of fools. Its motto is: “Fiat justitia, pereat mundus” — let justice be done, though the world may perish. Abstract principles are imposed without regard for their collective consequences.

This is why the demand for a JUGEXIT as formulated by Le Gallou imposes itself as a necessary consequence. We must return to the primacy of the nation and to the right of European peoples to historical continuity.

This book is a precious intellectual fuel, fit to further feed the fire of remigration. I am grateful for this welcome French support in the metapolitical battle for this idea. Others must follow.

All of the European intelligentsia is now called upon to develop political projects for remigration. We need analyses of the economic benefits. We need a comprehensive database and an assimilation tracking tool in order to develop detailed remigration programs. We need in-depth historical studies on remigration projects throughout world history. And we need justifications — in political science, philosophy, and on moral grounds — of the notion of peoplehood, of ethnocultural continuity, and of the deportation of foreigners.

This project is the vastest and most decisive in all of European history. One example is sufficient to convey its urgency: in 2025, Germany had 83 million inhabitants, yet there remain only about 11 million German women under the age of 40 without a migration background. This is less than the population of Germany in 1684, in the immediate aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. The birth rate of these 11 million would be between 1 and 1.3. The next generation of women will therefore not exceed 6 million. From 80 million in theory to 6 million in only two generations. We are living in a demographic illusion, a mere optical effect created by the “majority” of baby boomers. When they disappear, the balance will tip. Our countries already carry within them a multi-ethnic state dominated by Islam. In 20 years, most baby boomers will be dead. This is the disturbing truth the media hide from us: we have only a window of 15 to 20 years to save our 40,000-year-old European heritage.

All the great battles of the last two millennia pale in comparison. All the great victories of the last two millennia will be worth nothing if we lose this fight. Neither Thermopylae, nor Tours and Poitiers, nor Vienna, nor Lepanto were more important than our struggle for remigration is today.

Over the next 20 years, the hopes and sufferings, the faith, blood, sweat, and tears of tens of thousands of years will converge toward a single point. This is the decisive message of this book, addressed to each reader: Europe must unite under the banner of remigration and accomplish this monumental work, or else it will sink forever into failure.2

**

Remigration: A Mobilizing Myth  

The only battles one is sure to lose are those which one does not fight. Remigration is a mobilizing myth. It affirms the right of Europeans to not be “Great-Replaced” or colonized. It affirms Europeans’ right to historical and cultural continuity. And let us be clear: the choice is between remigration or submersion. Without remigration, Europeans will become minorities in their own lands between 2050 and 2100, depending on the country. We have no right to leave this to the generations that are coming. This is the meaning of the message brought forth by the powerful Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek: “Being at home in your own country and being safe there is not a privilege, it is your right, and therefore I demand to take back possession of my country. We Europeans must demand and reclaim our countries. I was born in 1996 and I am part of the Remigration generation.”

Jean-Yves Le Gallou

**

Consciousness of Being European  

The European Union is part of the problem, but European consciousness, the consciousness of being European, is one of the keys to the solution. Let us open our eyes: nationality has become meaningless, cheapened by birthright citizenship and naturalizations of convenience. What does it mean to be French when some speak of their (presumed) compatriots as “céfrans” or “gwers”?6 What does it mean to be German for those who bear the title but first pledge allegiance to Istanbul? What does it mean to be Swedish when your “countrymen” cover you with shame in the Danish islands? What is the value of being Irish when, after two centuries of emancipation struggle and a century of independence, the country finds itself overwhelmed by populations from elsewhere? What future is there for a Briton when his new “fellow citizens” intend to impose sharia on him? Hence, in patriotic demonstrations across the United Kingdom, the gradual replacement of the Union Jack by the Cross of Saint George (English), the Welsh dragon, or the Norman leopards of Sussex.

Nationality bound to citizenship has been cheapened; it is no longer sufficient to define identity. Other criteria must therefore now be used: origin, civilization, culture, religion. And to answer Samuel Huntington’s question in Who Are We?: we are Whites. White Europeans. White European Christians. Each person can then express this civilizational belonging through language and history, according to their national expression: French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Portuguese, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Baltic, Romanian, or Croatian…

The Chain of Solidarity of Peoples in Revolt  

These different expressions must not oppose each other, but converge. Europeans must stop quarreling over who gets stuck with the hot potato of invasion and distributing migrants that no one (rightly) wants. They must stop limiting themselves to pushing back, beyond the Alps or the Channel, illegal immigrants whose place is outside Europe. European realities demand a European response. Not the one promoted by the Brussels bureaucracy, but just the opposite. A chain of solidarity of peoples in revolt must be built: from the demonstrations in Dresden to those in London, from Dublin to Lisbon, from Porto to Warsaw, from Amsterdam to Krakow, or from Callac to Bélâbre (in rural France). Similarly, the growing solidarity between dissident governments and alternative political forces should be welcomed. No country in isolation will be able to escape a fundamentally cross-border phenomenon.

At Home Among Our Own  

In a depressed Europe, remigration can be a mobilizing myth, a project bearing hope. The hope of finding one’s country again, of reclaiming one’s history, of fully living one’s culture and civilization — with one’s peers and one’s own kind. The hope also of rediscovering the trust necessary to live in peace, the joy of walking the streets without fear.”

At home among our own” could be the slogan of remigration: understanding one another in one’s own neighborhood and sharing the same customs and traditions; allowing women to move freely, without needing reserved train cars or taxis; enabling young White boys to play football again without risking stab wounds; going to the swimming pool without being subjected to the antics of troublemakers; moving closer to a society with more freedom and less surveillance; gaining easier access to housing; finding reduced waiting times for care and less crowded emergency services; refocusing public assistance on our own and not on others. 

After the failure of living together, which became a living side by side, then a living face to face, let us rediscover the happiness of being among ourselves. This is also the condition for rediscovering Philia, civic friendship between citizens, the sharing of common values that allows, according to Aristotle, for avoiding discord and civil war. It also means responding to the expectations of the young generation that looks with nostalgia at sepia photos from the 1960s: an era they did not know, when Europeans still lived among Europeans, sharing the same customs, the same traditions, the same culture, and the same values. Finally, it is a matter of assuming one’s duty: transmitting to one’s descendants the heritage one has received.

Remigration: A Mobilizing Myth with Wind in its Sails  

Remigration is the myth that can empower peoples to take back the power seized by oligarchies. It is a double reconquest of sovereignty. First, internal sovereignty, that of the people, through the humbling of the mediacracy and the dictatorship of judges: JUGEXIT. Then, external sovereignty, through the revision of European treaties according to a triple orientation: the effective implementation of the principle of subsidiarity, implying a strict limitation of the competences devolved to the European Union; the primacy of national constitutions; the strengthening of the European Council, in accordance with the logic defended by Hungarian and Polish conservative circles.

European Identitarians, Unite! Remigration entered the field of political debate in 2014–2015. Ten years later, in 2025, three summits devoted to remigration were held in Milan, Oslo (in the presence of Renaud Camus), and Porto. Very many political formations, reaching up to 38% of the vote in Austria, have included remigration in their program: the FPÖ (Austria), the AfD (Germany), the SDS (Slovenia), Vlaams Belang (Flanders), the Forum for Democracy (Netherlands), the Sweden Democrats, the Democrats of Norway, the Danish People’s Party, Vox (Spain), Chega (Portugal), the Lega (Italy), Reconquête (France), the Homeland Party (Great Britain), as well as Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland. These parties work together in the European Parliament, associated either with the Patriots group, the Sovereign Nations group, or the European Conservatives and Reformists group. 

The American “big brother” is not disinterested in this struggle of White Europeans. Elon Musk participated via video conference in the great demonstration in London on September 13, 2025 under the slogan “Unite the Kingdom.” President Trump, on many occasions, and Vice President J. D. Vance, in his Munich speech (Spring 2025), have underscored the risk that the demographic submersion of Europe poses to civilization. Moreover, American policy shows that the reversal of migratory flows is possible, since they are now implementing it. But one must have the will to do so. Hence the importance of developing a common consciousness. European identitarians, unite!

Europeans today share a common mythology, drawing on Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Finnish, and Greek sources, while being inspired by Christian themes. This mythology finds a powerful expression in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. They must heed the call to the “free peoples of the West” raised by King Théoden at the dawn of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields:

“Arise, arise, riders of Rohan!”

Reemigration: For A Europe For Our Children 

Jean-Yves Le Gallou

Being human mean running oneself as a workshop of self-realization

 What began in the Modern Age was no less than a new form of large-scale anthropotechnic regime, a fundamentally changed battle formation of disciplines. Need we repeat that it was Foucault whose studies on the history of modern disciplinary procedures, which had no models to speak of, sensitized us to this previously almost unnoticed field?

The decisive changes primarily concern the traditional division in the world of the practising life, which I call the ‘ontological local government reorganization’. In the course of this process, the practising of antiquity, the adepts of the philosophical modus vivendi, and later the monks, the pentitential warriors and athletes of Christ, had withdrawn from worldly matters in order to devote themselves exclusively to what each viewed as ‘their own’. Their whole existence revolved around the concern for their own ability to remain intact in the midst of the ominous century. Their aim was no less than the final immunization of their own lives in the face of the constant threat of injuries and ubiquitous distractions. Suum tantum curare had been the salvific formula for the era of self-discovery in retreat from the world, applying to both philosophical and religioid life plans.

One cannot remotely claim that the Modern Age disabled the world-averse and radically metanoetic forms of religiously or philosophically coded cura sui overnight. Nothing would be more deluded than to believe that in early modernity, the escapists of yesterday suddenly turned into new worldlings who regretted their gloomy absences. The legend of the ‘modern individual’s’ suddenly recovered affirmation of the world and life should be approached with suspicion. More than a few sound thinkers of the Modern Age placed their lives program-matically under the sign of Saturn – the planet of distance from the world. The homines novi who entered the stage in the fourteenth century, the early virtuoso era, were not runaway monks who had abruptly embraced the joys of the extroverted life, as if they wanted to erase the memory of their thousand-year recession like some regrettable episode. They normally clung doggedly to their ontological exile, indeed claimed more than ever a noble exterritoriality in relation to impoverished ordinariness. Even an exemplary new human like Petrarch – one of the first moderns to wear a poet’s crown, the emblem of a new type of aristocracy – had very strong personal reasons to hide in his refuge in the Vaucluse for so many years, searching for a non-monastic form of vita solitaria. Where else could he shelter his noble sickness, the world-hatred of the man of black-galled constitution, the evil discovered and fought by the abbots in the Egyptian desert under the name akédia, if not in his study cell, far from vulgar concerns?

For the early moderns, devotion to the spiritual sphere still assumed a refusal to participate in profane affairs. And yet they, the proto-virtuosos, vacillating between the older monks’ cells and the newer studios of the humanists,23 found themselves drawn into a heightened learning dynamic. They were pulled along by a drift towards self-intensification that only formed a contradictory unity with conventional monastic de-selfing courses. This intensification resulted in tendencies towards a restricted new participation of spiritual persons in the world. Using a term coined by the neo-phenomenologist Hermann Schmitz, albeit in a modified fashion, I call this return a ‘re-embedding’ of the excluded subject.24 The first embedding enables individuals to participate directly in their situations; through re-embedding, they find their way back to these after phases of estrangement. Whoever affirms an immersion in the situation is on the way to becoming what Goethe, referring to himself, occasionally called ‘the worldling in the middle’ [das Weltkind in der Mitte].25Nonetheless: even at the start of the Modern Age, the exiles of the practising were chosen just as resolutely as in antiquity, when the ethical distinction began to take effect. How else can one explain the popularity of the icon of St Jerome, which inspired countless variations on the joys of retreat in the early Modern Age? The scholar with the lion at his feet still testifies to the attraction of the contemplative life on the outskirts of a convivially transformed, in fact a bourgeoisified desert – and in a turbulent time that, one might think, was knowledgeable about everything but deserts and refuges. But note: the escapism of the moderns was as urgently motivated as it was in the days of the earliest disgust at circumstances. It still gave hope to those without worldly hope, still offered those with no social prospects the prospect of an alternative existence. Nonetheless, the newer retreats often accumulated worldly meanings with a value and scope of their own, to the point where recessively excluded subjectivity, within its enclave of self-concern, emerged as a figure of the world in its own right. Now, from the starting point of a methodically sought unworldliness, a virtuoso industry blossomed. Its masters took themselves up as workpieces of the art of living, moulding themselves into humane valuables. What Nietzsche’s confession in Ecce Homo – ‘I took myself in hand’ – renders audible, as well as the auto-therapeutic impulse of a chronically ill man, are overtones that recall the turn of the early moderns towards a transformation of themselves into living artifices. Perhaps the habit26 maketh not the monk, but study gets the scholar in shape, writing exercises make the humanist skilled at his subject, and virtù allows the virtuoso to shine. In the midst of a subjectivity excluded through regression into itself, the practising discover a distant coast within themselves – the promise of an unknown world. More than a hundred years before the actual continent, a symbolic America appeared on the horizon: its coast is the place where the practising of modernity set foot in the small world of themselves.

Hence what Jacob Burckhardt, following the trail of Michelet, had presented as the formula for the Renaissance – ‘the discovery of the world and man’ – was initially, seemingly paradoxically, an inner-world event. It led to the discovery of the world in humans, or rather the discovery of the human being as a model of the world, a microcosmic abbreviation of the universe. Friedrich Hebbel still had a notion of this phrase when he noted in his journal: ‘Great men are humanity’s tables of contents.’ The secret of the humane ability to be whole would no longer be founded on the biblically certified image of God: it pointed equally to the image of the world, which makes suffering, active and contemplative humans view themselves as universal mirrors and cosmic oracles. This launched the train that would not stop until it arrived at the Baroque equation of God and nature – with the human being as a copula and living sign of equality. For the subject of the Modern Age, this meant that it had to understand itself as a reality-hungry potential. From that point on, being human meant running oneself as a workshop of self-realization.

YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE

On Anthropotechnics 

PETER SLOTERDIJK

The Holy Grail

 

Scotland spread this consolation through every fold of its moors: fairies survive everywhere, even under the cataracts of sadness.

Daniel Du Lac joined me in the port of Thurso, facing the Orkney Islands. The archipelago shimmered on the horizon, less than thirty miles away.

We were heading towards the Old Man of Hoy, king of the stacks, in the south of the archipelago. Du Lac had arrived from Paris with a bag of ropes. For twenty years, my friend, a high-mountain guide, a wanderer of the peaks, always showed up whenever there was a summit to climb.

I had Benoît for the sea, Du Lac for the cliffs, Humann for the steppes: I was ready to travel the world. I compensated for my shortcomings with the art of knowing how to surround myself with the right people.

At the helm, Benoît grazed the base of the stack. The sandstone column rose a few dozen meters from the coastal cliff.

"It's a Celtic-Shaivite lingam," I said to Du Lac.

"There is a route to be opened on the south face," said Du Lac.

The sea stack rose, its 160 meters of sandstone covered in green moss. Its summit was crowned with thundering petrels and moderate gulls. Behind it, the coastline crumbled. It held firm. " I will maintain ," say the kings of Holland. "I am here," said the sea stack. We sailed in silence past the dead castles. The cathedrals had drowned. Only a spire remained.At the port of Stromness, while I was reading a translation of Ivanhoe , Du Lac's favorite phrase—the one that had been propelling me to the world's peaks for twenty years—ringed out in the cabin: "Tesson! We're leaving." As usual, I closed my book, buckled my bag, and obeyed. I never said no to Du Lac. Chardonne had experienced this kind of hypnotism: "You think you're acting, but you're being swept along." {5} . »

We took the ferry, disembarked at Hoy, and walked for two hours under a grey sky along the road that connected the port to Rackwick Bay. Du Lac carried the ropes, and I wore a kilt out of respect for the wind.

At Rackwick, a sign warned visitors: "Climbers are hereby strongly advised that no one will come to their rescue." Typical British manner: when you leave everyone to die in their own corner, there's no harm in being polite. In Chamonix, the soldiers of the high-mountain gendarmerie platoon preferred to save everyone, without any niceties. Their motto: "Your suffering gives rise to our duties." It was a different breed altogether from the obsequiousness of the British.

We camped in the moor, near a fern-covered spring. Twilight lingered, and so did the stack. Its summit protruded above the crest of the cliff. The wind howled. Du Lac protected the tent behind a rampart of sandstone slabs, which he erected with heavy panting. He was resuming the old megalithic labor.

At dawn, we climbed the Old Man. First, we had to descend the cliff to the sea via ledges of salty grass, then cross a basalt plateau to the foot of the majestic column. The cracks were damp. Du Lac was exultant, climbing quickly, securing himself to the few English pitons. With us was Benoît, who had never climbed any major rock routes. Since he made us do night watches, we got our revenge by dangling him over the sixth-grade overhangs. He didn't feel dizzy at all and found it amusing, though quite pointless, to play the monkey on a rock stained with guano. An Englishman we had met the day before on the ferry was returning from climbing the Old Man. We asked him his impressions: " Pretty horrible. "The seals' cries didn't help matters. Their bagpipe-like death throes echoed off the ruins. The birds were cursing us. The sea foamed. The sky rolled. The wind wailed and lifted my kilt. We felt out of place in this sepulcher. Suddenly, we were at the summit. Again, that feeling of complete gratitude, a fleeting moment. For a brief instant, the universe grants you at the summit what you didn't know you needed before reaching it.

The next day, I was belaying Du Lac on the south face. We forced a new four-pitch line of climbing, graded sixth and seventh, on unstable rock. Du Lac, moving from layer to layer, secured himself with tiny metal nuts wedged into the sandy cracks.

Then he reassured me, and I joined him. Everything was flaking away. Below, everything sparkled. The sun in the foam. The foam on the rock. The air vibrated. The seals bellowed. The birds were wild. The lake was blowing. If it had fallen, our metal armor would have torn away. We were once again on the summit of the Old Man of Hoy, bathed in complex splendor and primal joy.

What were we looking for when we were looking for the Grail? A cup of the most precious craftsmanship? A modest bowl filled with the blood of Christ? A vessel full of whatever we wanted to find there? Therein lay the genius of Chrétien de Troyes: to have revealed nothing, compelling the knight to never cease his quest, compelling the novel to never end, offering the reader to imagine whatever he wanted, encouraging him to always reread the tale.

"Grail": the Tao of the West, nothingness filled with its own mystery, a representation born of absence and poured into the void. The name of the Grail was legion. But unlike the satanic legion, this legion shimmered with meanings associated with the noblest virtues. Through the interpretations of the Grail, the motifs of the Western soul were gathered. It was the stained-glass window of the grandeur of being. Purity, prowess, valor, adventure, love, or faith—everything made sense, everything was Grail. O blessed century (the twelfth) when chivalry anchored a society to these virtues of strength and beauty. Then, high and low, pure and filthy, light and darkness, good and evil, white and black were not equal.

The knight on his journey sought the meaning of his existence and the means to elevate it to its highest definition. Under no circumstances would the Grail be reduced to a mere object—even one resembling Christ's cup. It was something else entirely. It could signify the culmination of the highest ambitions.

Another possibility: the Grail would correspond to the quest itself. Only the movement leading from darkness to light, that is, from question to answer, would then matter. The quest for the Grail would thus be defined by its own impetus. Born of its desire, living by its own mechanism, nourished by its own existence, the Grail was the quest. "The selfhood of the Grail," the pedants would say. One could imagine a lay:

— What are you looking for, knight?

— I'm trying to search.

— Will you find it?

— I don't want to find it.

— Where are you going?

— Where the quest continues.

— Will it ever end?

— Its purpose is not to have one.

Had I reached the Holy Grail atop this stack? On the platform, suspended between sky and sea, I stood at the point of contact between reality and the ideal. Reality was the sandstone. The ideal, the feeling that swelled in my heart of being where I was meant to be. Nothing made me want to descend. Neither the wind blew strong enough, nor had the rain yet fallen. My sense of plenitude beneath the immensity of the sky found a homeland of ten square meters bordered by one hundred and sixty-five meters of void.

For over two months, I had called this convergence of sensations, emotions, and observations, this crossroads of paths , the "emergence of the fairy ." Something could appear if one were willing to make the effort. The arrival of the fairy contradicted Yeats; life was certainly not " a perpetual preparation for something that never happens . "

Here, with bruised hands, standing at the crossroads of space, time and effort, I had reached the "fine point" invented by Vladimir Jankélévitch, the total instant where everything was accomplished, where man finally experienced the awareness of having achieved what he had desired without even knowing that he dreamed of it.

Du Lac put an end to these digressions. It's easy to drift in muddy meditations when fulmars howl over the churning seas. "Tesson, we must go down."

It was foolish to think oneself at home on the tip of a needle. Everything pointed to leaving.

A summit is never a sharp point or an end point.

Du Lac was right: we only knew how to unleash stages.

The race continued. They had to get out. Keep searching for somewhere else. And for now, get off the train. The quest resumed, the movement was reborn.

Moreover, Du Lac had already swung the fifty meters of rope into the void, its strands whipping against the rock in the wind. The Holy Grail was to set off again.

As long as we had to go and get it, it meant we had found it.

Sylvian Tesson

With the Fairies 

Samuel Crowell: In Memoriam!

By Richard A. Widmann ∙ May 1, 2017
Last updated on August 19, 2024

I learned of the passing of Samuel Crowell as I have learned of the passing of several friends over the past year—via email. I had been away for the day but decided to check my messages prior to retiring for the evening. There were several stacked up regarding my late friend; the subject of the first was simply “Crowell.” Nearly three weeks had already passed since the heart attack that claimed his life on 1 April – news doesn’t necessarily travel fast on the Internet.

As revisionists, we are naturally skeptical and therefore question reports of contemporary events as well as historical accounts. The attachment of an obituary quickly removed all doubt. It is widely known that “Samuel Crowell” was a pseudonym – one of several which my colleague chose to assign to his articles; I shall for the sake of the privacy of his family use that name throughout this article. Crowell selected his nom de plume due to the threat of persecution that revisionists suffered from the mid-1990s on. It was in fact legislation throughout Europe trampling free speech with regard to the Holocaust story that first caught Crowell’s eye and resulted in his immersion in the subject.

The man who would become Samuel Crowell was born in San Francisco on 5 May 1955. Crowell loved his country and especially the freedoms that so many took for granted during the Eisenhower administration of his birth. He would join the Marine Corps where he served two tours of duty. He graduated from the University of California (Berkeley) where he studied philosophy, foreign languages, and modern European history. His continued love of history and amazing ability to recall facts resulted in his attainment of a Master’s degree in Eastern European History from Columbia University. He would later become a Professor of History at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

I first became aware of Crowell around 1994. I spotted his comments on the alt-revisionism newsgroup in the days before the appearance of any websites on the Holocaust (or just about any other matter). His user ID at the time was “Ehrlich606” and for the first couple years, I referred to him simply as Ehrlich. I noticed his comments initially because they were utterly free of cant. His questions were sharp. His comments were direct – but never derogatory. Crowell would later describe himself as a “moderate revisionist.” This was more than a label but rather a school of thought that he hoped would find more adherents. Crowell was genuinely interested in debunking the exaggerations and excesses of the Holocaust story but did so without any intention of offending anyone – especially the Jewish people.

Shortly after our first exchanges on the Internet, I introduced Crowell to Bradley R. Smith and the small cadre of volunteers around CODOH. Crowell was immediately drawn to Smith’s style, charm, and cause – namely to argue for intellectual freedom with regard to the Holocaust story. It was not long after this that I had the opportunity to meet Crowell face-to-face. It was the first of many such occasions in which we would gather with other revisionists for food, drink, and discussion of the latest turns in Holocaust studies. During that first meeting, we visited the home of Friedrich Berg, who was well known for his studies surrounding the absurdity of the diesel-gas-chamber story.

The Repal company of Leipzig offers “air defense shelter doors and shutters, in steel” in this advertisement, which appeared in a 1942 issue of the German trade periodical Baulicher Luftschutz. Such doors were gas resistant. Note the protected peep hole.

Berg shared documents from his personal files including several having to do with the construction and sale of German air-raid-shelter components. While going through these wartime materials, we first saw the Repal advertisement for “air defense shelter doors and shutters, in steel.” We immediately recognized that the gas-resistant door with protected peephole was identical to the Majdanek “gas-chamber door” replica that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) had put on display for an American audience at their new museum on the National Mall.

By early 1997, Crowell’s first article appeared on the CODOH Website, “Wartime Germany’s Anti-Gas Air-Raid Shelters: A Refutation of Pressac’s ‘Criminal Traces.’” Crowell’s approach was to address the leading “exterminationist” writers with a positive rather than negative approach. His idea was, rather than saying something could not have been used as a gas chamber, to explain what it may more likely have been used for. Beginning with Jean-Claude Pressac’s noted 39 “Criminal Traces” – what he called “indirect proofs” of the Holocaust, Crowell presented benign explanations. When his article appeared in The Journal of Historical Review, the editor explained:[1]

“His basic argument is that the documents cited by Pressac as ‘traces’ of homicidal ‘gas chambers’ are references to air-raid shelters, or to their fittings or equipment. Specifically, he contends, the Birkenau crematory morgue rooms – the supposed ‘gas chambers’ where, it is alleged, hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed with ‘Zyklon’ pesticide – were modified to also serve as air-raid shelters with features to protect against possible Allied attacks with poison gas.”

By July of 1997, Crowell penned his second article dealing with the “bomb shelter thesis” – this time expanding his argument and leveraging newly found materials.

“Defending Against the Allied Bombing Campaign: Air Raid Shelters and Gas Protection in Germany” quickly found adherents and detractors from both the revisionist and exterminationist camps. While Crowell never claimed to be the first to make the air-raid-shelter argument, he clearly developed it beyond what others had done.[2] For revisionists who had argued for years that the gas chambers were all disinfection or delousing chambers, the “bomb-shelter thesis” seemed to take direct aim at their work. Likewise, a letter to Walter Reich, the Director of the USHMM explaining that the door displayed in the Washington DC museum was the replica of a common mass-produced air-raid-shelter door, went unanswered.[3]

Beyond various short book reviews, editorials, and commentary that Crowell penned at the time under various pseudonyms, he set to work to complete his revisionist magnum opus, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes: An Attempt at a Literary Analysis of the Holocaust Gassing Claim. Crowell’s book-length effort now went beyond the “bomb-shelter thesis” and examined the origin of the gas-chamber stories from the first reports through the disinfection procedures, the confessions of key witnesses and even the euthanasia campaign. Again, using his standard approach, Crowell sought to find logical explanations for the stories, which developed into what he termed “the Canonical Holocaust.” His approach was again a unique one. He applied the methodology of literary analysis and considered the sources and reports in a chronological and comparative method.

The title of Crowell’s definitive work was based on his discovery that the gassing narrative by “witness” Alexander Werth bore a stark similarity to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s description of a poisonous gassing in his Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman” of the 1920s. Crowell observed that there were causes for the gassing claims and did not accept the often-repeated explanations of the more extreme revisionists that the entire tale amounted to a lie, a hoax, or some sort of Jewish conspiracy. Rather Crowell would call the gassing claims “the delusion of the Twentieth Century.”

Bradley Smith published the first copies of Sherlock (as we referred to it) in an inexpensive Xerox-copied, plastic covered, spiral-bound edition. Smith began a public relations campaign called “Operation Sherlock” in which over a hundred copies of the book were sent to an elite of authors, intellectuals, and activists.[4] Needless to say, there were few who would respond publicly, or honestly.

In 2000, Crowell would tackle the bomb-shelter thesis once again. Based on additional research, Crowell wrote his highly provocative “Bomb Shelters in Birkenau: A Reappraisal.” In “Bomb Shelters in Birkenau,” Crowell argued that the crematoria at Birkenau had been equipped with gas-tight fixtures as part of a civil-defense measure and that this is the most plausible argument for their existence.

As Lao Tzu commented, “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” Crowell’s bright revisionist career abruptly ended as the millennium began. If interesting events occurred or new discoveries were made, Crowell would continue to comment among friends, but his public writing had all but ceased. It was a great surprise when in 2011 publisher Chip Smith decided to publish a proper volume of Sherlock now titled, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes and Other Writings on the Holocaust, Revisionism, and Historical Understanding.

The new 400-page edition by Nine-Banded Books included a new preface, and new chapters including “Revisiting the Bomb Shelter Thesis: A Postscript to ‘Bomb Shelters in Birkenau,’” and “The Holocaust in Retrospect: A Historical and Revisionist Assessment.” For a moment it seemed that Crowell was back. A prototype for a website was drawn up, but it was really not to be. The final words that Crowell would write on the subject were these:

“The destruction of the Jews in World War Two will remain an important object for study and commemoration among the Jewish people and the German people. The wars, revolutions, ethnic cleansings, famines, epidemics, and grand experiments in social engineering that dislocated many tens of millions of human beings, and killed a large proportion of them, and of which the Holocaust was a part, will be remembered by everyone who has a stake in the European inheritance. Like any series of events, it will be romanticized. Like any series of events, it will be mythologized. And, like any series of events, it will be properly understood only after the passage of time.”

Crowell was done with the Holocaust story. As such he turned his attention to other subjects. Foremost in his mind was another historical controversy—one that he claimed to wrestle with for 50 years — that of the authorship of the works of William Shakespeare. His final book was William Fortyhands: Disintegration and Reinvention of the Shakespeare Canon (2016). Crowell stated that his disintegration of the Shakespeare canon was the work that he was most proud of. Crowell inscribed the copy that he gave me, “The H. is over, so time for other things.” Indeed, for Crowell, he had said all that he could say on the Holocaust.

In early 2016, following news of the passing of his old friend, Bradley Smith, Crowell wrote what would be his last article – a memorial for Smith – “Bradley Smith: In Memoriam.” Here, once again, Crowell used the phrase “In Memoriam” just as he had dedicated his magnum opus many years prior. As used in Sherlock the Latin phrase seemed like a seal on the tomb of the Holocaust story itself, forever relegating it to memory. The meaning of these words shifted however when applied to Bradley Smith. The words had transformed into a requiem for a dear departed friend. It seems fitting that they be used once again to remember my friend Samuel Crowell. You will be missed.

Notes
[1] Samuel Crowell, “Wartime Germany’s Anti-Gas Air-Raid Shelters: A Refutation of Pressac’s ‘Criminal Traces,’” The Journal of Historical Review Vol. 18, No. 4, July / August 1999, p. 7.
[2] Crowell credited Arthur Butz for example and his 1996 article, “Vergasungskeller.” Online: https://codoh.com/library/document/vergasungskeller/
[3]Samuel Crowell, “Samuel Crowell’s Letter to the Director of the USHMM.” Online: https://codoh.com/library/document/samuel-crowells-letter-to-the-director-of-the/
[4]“CODOH Launches a New Revisionist Masterpiece: ‘The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes’.” Smith’s Report No. 62, Feb./Mar. 1999; https://codoh.com/media/files/sr62.pdf.https://codoh.com/library/document/vergasungskeller/

[3] Samuel Crowell, “Samuel Crowell’s Letter to the Director of the USHMM.” Online: https://codoh.com/library/document/samuel-crowells-letter-to-the-director-of-the/

[4] “CODOH Launches a New Revisionist Masterpiece: ‘The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes’.” Smith’s Report No. 62, Feb./Mar. 1999; https://codoh.com/media/files/sr62.pdf
.

Richard A. Widmann

Richard A. Widmann, together with David Thomas, created modern CODOH as we know it, when he talked Bradley Smith into creating what was then called CODOHWeb, CODOH's online presence in 1995/1996. In 1999, Richard Widmann was among the team that launched and ran the revisionist periodical The Revisionist, until it was taken over by Germar Rudolf in 2003. When this project collapsed in 2005 with Rudolf's arrest, deportation and 44-months imprisonment, Richard Widmann, after some hesitation, created a new revisionist periodical in 2009 called Inconvenient History, which he issued until 2017, when this project, too, was once more taken over by Germar Rudolf.
***
A New Approach to Shakespeare Authorship
Christopher Pankhurst
1,075 words

Samuel Crowell
William Fortyhands: Disintegration and Reinvention of the Shakespeare Canon
Charleston, W.V.: Nine-Banded Books, 2016

The idea that the plays of William Shakespeare were written by someone other than William Shakespeare is a well-established motif in literary conspiracy theories. Starting in the mid-19th century, numerous and varied writers have gone into great detail to prove that the Shakespeare corpus was actually written by Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or Edward de Vere, amongst others. These theories are entertaining enough, partly because they convey that gratifying feeling of having discovered hidden knowledge, and partly because they shine light into the puzzling lacunae of Shakespeare’s biography. But they have never been particularly convincing.

This leaves us with a situation where the known facts of Shakespeare’s life seem too paltry to tell us much about the writing of the plays, but the alternative candidates seem no more plausible. Consequently, we find a majority of scholars coalescing around the conventional attribution of the plays to Shakespeare (the Stratfordians) and smaller groups advocating for one or other of the alternative candidates (the anti-Stratfordians). In the absence of any greatly compelling evidence, positions on all sides tend to become rather fixed.

In his new book, William Fortyhands, Samuel Crowell gives an erudite and entertaining history of the background to the Shakespeare controversy, weighs the merits of all sides, and offers his own, surprisingly plausible solution.

Crowell characterises the literary milieu in which the plays were produced as the “Elizabethan Beats.” This description applies to the group of dissolute young men who congregated on the London theatrical world in the late 16th century, men like Christopher Marlowe. Like their 20th-century counterparts, these young writers embodied a “live fast, die young” ethos, and unlike the later beats mostly did die young. There were hundreds of plays being produced in England at this time and the Elizabethan Beats seem to have been an important engine of this industry. It is within this milieu that William Shakespeare left his legacy.

Famously, following Shakespeare’s death a folio of plays bearing his name was published. This has forever been the foundational document of Shakespeare studies but the situation is complicated because many of the plays had also appeared in quarto editions which were usually much shorter than the folio versions. Some of these quartos bore the name of Shakespeare but others were published anonymously. Even more confusingly, some of the individual plays were published in differing versions as quartos. Just to complete the confusion, earlier versions of the “Shakespeare” plays seem to have existed, written by other authors and upon which the Shakespeare versions seem to have been based, such as the Ur-Hamlet.

Crowell marshals all of this material expertly and gives an excellent and lucid account of the rise of Shakespeare studies culminating in David Garrick’s 1769 Jubilee festival in Stratford. Ironically, the increase in Shakespeare’s popularity and growing interest in his life led to the uncovering of certain documents (most notoriously his will) that began to provoke questions about authorship. Crowell documents the history of the authorship question in great detail and is careful to contextualize his study with various theoretical perspectives, too much so in my opinion. But this does at least demonstrate his good faith in seeking to approach an objective view rather than promoting a personal hobby horse.

Ultimately, Crowell concludes that the plays were probably written by a number of those Elizabethan Beats, either singly or collaboratively, and that a final position on who wrote exactly what is probably unknowable. The reason that Shakespeare’s name was so definitively associated with so many of the plays, Crowell argues, is that his role was something like editor and theatrical producer. Essentially, he sourced texts, edited them down for performance (the shorter quartos) and funded the whole enterprise. He would have been “informally presented” (p. 214) as the writer of the plays. Unlike the actual writers, Shakespeare appears to have been very wealthy at a time when playwrights were treated as cheap hacks.

This is an elegant interpretation of the available evidence. Even though it leaves us with a situation vastly more complex than attribution to any one single author, it allows us to go beyond all of the evidential problems that such attributions caused. It is an excellent application of Occam’s Razor because Crowell follows the evidence and accepts what it tells him, even if doing so seems to shatter our idea of what it means to be an author. It would appear that in the 18th century the person who actually wrote the words of the plays was not much of a consideration. The “pull” would have been the name of the producer who would have been associated with a string of hits. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see the sort of contemporary parallels with this. For example, films are generally more closely identified with their directors than their screenwriters. Perhaps an even better example would be the mythical creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. It is quite possible that Satoshi is a pseudonym hiding a number of cryptocurrency experts. Perhaps we should start calling him Satoshi Fortyhands?

Despite Crowell’s compelling assessment of the evidence there are still questions remaining. Crowell points out that if Shakespeare really did write the plays then he must have amassed a great deal of knowledge from somewhere. It is pretty much agreed by everyone that he didn’t have an extensive education so perhaps he picked his knowledge up by socializing with a range of interesting and knowledgeable people?

If Shakespeare really was the sort of person who went to local drinking establishments to get the lowdown on legal terminology, Italian geography, hawking, or what have you, then one would expect more contemporary references to him as a real person. This is not what we find. Almost all the references to him are based strictly on the title page attributions of the plays and poems. (p. 236)

But if this mitigates against Shakespeare as a writer, which is primarily a solitary occupation, then surely it mitigates even more against Shakespeare as impresario, with all the organizational and publicity work that that would imply.

Such questions are unlikely to resolve into definitive answers, and Crowell is surely right to conclude that we will never come to a definitive conclusion about who wrote Shakespeare’s plays. The scenario he paints in William Fortyhands is remarkable for being at once a sober handling of the evidence and a radical reassessment of the authorship question.

Christopher Pankhurst
https://counter-currents.com/