At present, the purpose is to make people dream. Ever concerned with concealing their identity and secrets, the ‘invisible rulers’ seem, paradoxically, willing to let this process unfold. Perhaps they enjoy copyright benefits.
In this hotchpotch of fanciful intuitions, however, one may yet come across some valid elements, some paths to follow that do not necessarily lead through the CNRS or Mallet-Isaac.778 Nevertheless, one must, in the process, exercise caution and, above all, remain serious.
The editors of Kadath magazine, which is published in Brussels and headed by Mr Ivan Verheyden, are making every possible effort for that to happen. They belong to those who publish articles on the topic of megaliths, pyramids, Chinese alchemy and the Easter island tablets. Unlike others, however, they strive to remain level-headed and denounce certain publications that muddy the waters and sow confusion.
This is what they write concerning the ‘work’ of Erich von Däniken:779 ‘We are currently witnessing the flourishing of works whose authors take pride in bringing extraordinary revelations regarding the vestiges of the past yet are unable to offer us a single shred of evidence that they have genuinely and profoundly studied the civilisations that these vestiges attest to. The works produced by these authors may well have been most skilfully conceived, constituting a most pleasant reading experience with a high likelihood of seducing those readers who long for exhilaration and distraction. In numerous cases, however, such literary works are mere archaeological fiction, not to mention those whose authors surrender to unbridled speculations on presupposed facts that they never trouble themselves to verify, sometimes even unknowingly giving in to absolutely false facts that others have pulled out of thin air’ (Kadath, issue number 15, November–December 1975).
In L’Homme éternel,780 Mr Pauwels makes the following profession of faith: ‘If one were to tell me that there is nothing marvellous to be found in this world, I would obstinately refuse to lend them an ear. I would continue to seek the marvellous, using my feeble means and the whole of my passion. And should I fail to find anything of the sort in this life, I would, upon departing the latter, state that it was not because there was, indeed, nothing for me to find, but because my soul was too thick and my mind too blind to succeed in this endeavour’.
***
Chroniques des civilisations disparues,781 a collection edited by Patrick Ferryn and Ivan Verheyden. Laffont, 301 pages.
Le livre de la Tradition, an essay by Jean-Michel Angebert. Laffont, 365 pages.
Les archives du savoir perdu, an essay by Guy Tarade. Laffont, 346 pages.
Les dossiers des OVNI. Les soucoupes volantes existent, an essay by Henry Durrant.782 Laffont, 310 pages.
L’homme éternel, an essay by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. Gallimard, 360 pages.
***
On the issue of Non-Identified Flying Objects (UFOs), there is a number of works that strive to be serious, especially those of Jacques Vallée (Les phénomènes insolites de l’espace,783 Table Ronde, 1959; Mystérieuses soucoupes volantes,784 Albatros, 1976) and Aimé Michel (Lueurs sur les soucoupes volantes,785 Mame, 1954; Mystérieux objects célestes,786 Planète, 1966). It is undoubtedly a significant fact that Michel has now written the following statement: ‘On my part, I only acknowledge one type of books on the topic of flying saucers these days: those which modestly report people’s testimonies, without ever attempting to provide readers with futile and impossible explanations’ (as stated in the preface to Jacques Lob’s and Robert Gigi’s book entitled Ceux venus d’ailleurs,787 Dargaud, 1973).
Controversies
Ideological Nuisances
The American managers that always ask whether an undertaking ‘is constructive enough’ have been targeted with derision. Nowadays, by contrast, it is fashionable ideologists that wonder: ‘Is it destructive enough?’
His eyes aglow with determination and his lips ever stretched by the hint of a smile, Mr Raymond Ruyer, a dynamic seventy-five-year-old native of the Vosges, is a teacher at the University of Nancy. Having authored several philosophical works (Dieu des religions, dieu de la science,788 Philosophie de la valeur,789 etc.), he has also been included in the ‘Liberté de l’esprit’790 collection headed by Mr Raymond Aron with a text entitled Eloge de la société de consommation.791 His ideological nuisances will mark a major milestone.
One sometimes says that ideologies are on the decline, but in the eyes of the neo-liberal school, they remain, on the contrary, most virulent (the two terms are not contradictory). Political life, which previously acted as their breeding ground, has increasingly been slipping beyond their reach, because statal governance is fraught with a tendency to submit to both economy and ‘technology’. However, what ideology loses on one level is compensated for on another. Its ‘spheres of intervention’ are growing ever greater in number and include the domains of university education, literature, arts, cinematography, urbanism and customs. Negative ideologies now herald a ‘culturalist millennium’, manifesting their presence in our everyday lives, which renders them all the more fearsome.
Utopia bears a connection to the promotion of anti-values and benefits from the snobbism of the masses and the instinctive attraction exerted by the ‘marginal’ ones. Drowned by a flow of affirmations which, despite being contradictory, are still endowed with an equal level of certainty, the individual finds himself unable to remain composed. It is not a lack of information that ails him but an excess of it, leaving him incapable of discriminating between the different facts, whose respective significance he can no longer perceive. Thrown off balance and perpetually shocked, he capitulates and loses his footing, having fallen prey to ‘the bewilderment of technology’. A society, however, cannot subsist in the absence of values and norms. The fact that the latter are relative is of little importance in this regard: human sensibility cannot perceive four simultaneous dimensions, and there is always a ‘relative’ element which enjoys an absolute sort of value for it. These norms are, in fact, beyond any and all demonstrations.
‘Degas792 readily offered a million to whomever could, by means of reasonable demonstration, prove that the Mona Lisa was indeed a work of art. Offering a million to the person who could prove that cannibalism is to be prohibited would, likewise, be a risk-free endeavour’, Mr Ruyer reminds us.
At every given moment, we find ourselves compelled to make a choice between equally desirable priorities. There are none of us that can, however, have everything at once, and our choices always define the consequences: ‘Man submits to the laws of the genre just as sailors do to the laws of navigation’.
‘It is possible for one to be both rich and healthy, but it is impossible to transform the Place Vendôme793 into a garage without causing aesthetical damage to it. It is equally impossible to desire both prosperity and the life of a bohemian poet, both efficacious order and picturesque indiscipline. Painters are well aware of the fact that if one seeks to create a light-dark effect, one must relinquish any intentions of being a colourist. A highly productive economy remains indifferent to just repartition. The peak of political equality does not coincide with maximal freedom; and the list goes on’.
There is thus a contradiction between the often-justified criticism of the malfeasances entailed in a production that is accomplished at all costs and the advocacy of a more general increase in living standards: ‘Demanding telephones and cars for everyone to use, “decent” housing, books, records and films for next to nothing is, indeed, synonymous with demanding assembly-line work in factories’.
‘Even ideologies themselves are founded on values, but since they are closed systems, they transform their own myths into concepts; meaning that they “rationalise” them and thus become pseudo-sciences’.
The procedure adopted by Karl Marx when boasting about how ‘scientific’ his Capital is does not differ in any way from that of Plato, who dressed his cosmopolitical utopias in geometrical and arithmetic-geometrical garments. His sole desire was to impress, to conceal the u
nreasonable aspect of his own claims. The same is true of Freud and his ‘science of the unconscious’; Philippe Sollers794 and his ‘sign science’ (where he speaks, for instance, of the epistemological role of Althusser’s points and commas and supports his assertions with graphs, frequency curves, etc.); not to mention those ‘human sciences’ which, similarly to ‘occult sciences’, lack any and every scientific aspect beyond their own names. For science is, after all, more than a mere question of means. Even when making use of computers, ‘clairvoyants’ remain, overall, nothing short of charlatans.
Making Hippies More Palatable
Incidentally, these so-called scientists give themselves away the moment they declare themselves to be ‘the sole genuine scientists’. For science is essentially open and subject to revision. Pseudo-sciences, by contrast, are allergic to all contradiction and secrete thought dictatorship.
Mr Raymond Ruyer writes: ‘Progressivist neophytes are always there to give everyone moral lectures in the name of currently fashionable ideologies and are hellishly severe in their role. The enemies of laws and the police make horrendous police officers. They are very strict moralists whose lack of humour rivals that of prophets, and just like the latter, are inclined to condemn anything that they fail to comprehend’.
Generally speaking, such a procedure comes up against the sanctioning of reality. Marxist ‘science’ is entirely founded upon an allegedly rigorous analysis of economic facts; and yet, whenever communists seize power, it is precisely in the economic domain that their failure is most conspicuous. Among Leftists, the sight of such failures has aroused a genuine ‘hatred of economics’ (though it is not the only factor). This is because economics implies a certain level of organisation, and thus order, hierarchy, efficiency, and rationality.
When striving to denounce the ‘reign of the powerful’, the hashish-smokers of Taizé795 display a most natural ability to readopt the tone of both biblical prophets and the Church Fathers. Mr Ruyer remarks: ‘Christ’s first apostle followers must have borne a genuine resemblance to the young people of today’s Californian “communes”, a fact that may either render hippies palatable or the apostles disgusting, depending on one’s personal preference’.
On the Topic of ‘Happiness’
The author then proceeds to review all the ideologies that rule our current world. He places particular emphasis on the wrongdoings of the racist ideology, which he is careful to distinguish from ethnicism and eugenics. He writes: ‘Although history refutes racism, it disproves neither eugenics nor the significance of individual biological value within a given population or ethnicity. It does not refute the existence of reciprocal relations between cultures and their respective biological foundation; nor does it dispel what one may well term “ethnicism”, meaning a doctrine that concerns itself with the preservation of cultural communities and, in the sense intended by Simone Weil, with the decent entrenchment of individuals into their own communities. […] History demonstrates the fact that, on the contrary, the most brilliant societies have worn their racial or ethnic foundation out and destroyed their own elites through various procedures of which the main ones are differential sub-replacement fertility and the sterilisation of the elites’.
Mr Ruyer also targets the ‘anti-racist ideology’, which, through a curious sort of paradox, is ‘even more out of touch with any and all scientific and objective consideration of the facts’.
Is it not a contradiction for one to claim, on the one hand, that all men are essentially similar, while insisting, on the other hand, on the ‘right to difference’ and concerning oneself with the fate of minorities? On the contrary: ‘One cannot avoid ethnocides when one does not even have the slightest notion of what an ethnicity is’.
‘In the name of the religious equality of souls, proselytical religions and their missionaries have fought against “shocking” customs which, oftentimes, had a eugenic or social value of their own, and struggled against vitalising native myths, etc. In the name of humanist egalitarianism, rationalistic ideologies have done the very same thing; and nowadays, it is Marxist or Maoist communists, or neo-Democrats, for that matter, that are behaving in the same manner’.
His conclusion is the following: ‘An intelligent type of racism, one that is endowed with a sense of ethnic diversity, is less harmful than an intemperate, egalitarian and all-assimilating kind of antiracism’.
‘The ideologies of happiness’, with their double-edged blades, are just as fearsome: love is reserved for the ‘righteous’ and blame for the ‘wicked’. For unless it is individual, love lacks all meaning and grandeur: you can only love someone. Whenever it takes on a collective and ‘ideological’ shape, love is always totalitarian: to love everyone is to love no one at all. It is in the name of ‘love’ that most harm has been done to mankind, remarked Nietzsche. Proudhon, whose socialism was rooted in an entirely Roman conception of justice, used to say: ‘Love has always seemed most ridiculous to me’; to which Raymond Ruyer adds: ‘Love is neither economical nor economic. Whenever it prevails, proprietorship recedes. Love is lawless, above all law, and the enemy of both law and order. Its sole norm is one’s faithfulness to others. It is anarchic, in the sense that it is directed at whoever is in most urgent need of it, without ever worrying about the fact that its primary contribution is one of disorder whenever providing shelter to the homeless (Saint Vincent de Paul was criticised in this respect). It is widely known that in Lambaréné, there reigned, all around Albert Schweitzer, an occasionally scandalous sort of disorder’.
Ideological epidemics spread through both doctrinal development and heresy — through contagion, intoxication, and intimidation, but also through means that are unique to each one, beginning with intellectual terrorism: ‘If you deny the truth of psychoanalysis, you do so because you have been blinded by your own mental complexes. If you refuse to admire Xenakis796 or Paul Klee,797 you will have murdered Mozart’.
There is also the method of ‘analogical blackmail’: ‘Van Gogh’s poverty continues to enrich the countless painters who lack talent. For all those that exploit eroticism, the process set in motion by the Flowers of Evil798 still serves as a windfall, as does the poverty of Pasteur’s laboratory for today’s research laboratories; it is a goldmine even for those who dedicate themselves to spreading rabies’. In this regard, the media play an ambiguous role: ‘Their actions are both in favour of and against social conservatism. They incite people against social order while simultaneously driving those that have surrendered to this frenzy to leave their civil servant positions and work in the private sector instead’. In other words, they spread the poison but rob it of its potency; they defuse the very bombs that they mass-produce.
Last but not least, just like with carcinogenic viral diseases, there is a self-aggravating principle that pervades these ‘ideological viruses’. This is what, according to Mr Ruyer, distinguishes mental demagogy from its plain political counterpart: it is sufficient to ‘suggest some negative mechanisms which, once in place, will work of their own accord, just like a wheat ear travels up one’s sleeve’.799
As a remedy for such ‘epidemics’, Raymond Ruyer goes as far as to propose an ‘intellectual fraud commission’, one that would compel the merchants of cerebral poisons to put labels on their products, declaring the latter to be ‘dangerous for your mental and social health’, as is the case with cigarette salesmen. For the time being, of course, such a project is no more than a theoretical possibility. Should it ever be implemented, we would, incidentally, be faced with a criteria issue; and this is where we would, in all likelihood, detect the presence of ideology.
The Laws of Ideological Demand and Offer
But how do we define ideology, ultimately? And is it not the case that any definition given to it is already arbitrary and, to some extent, ideological per se? This is the question which Mr Jean Baechler,800 another representative of the liberal current, has attempted to answer.
In Mr Baechler’s eyes, ideology presents
itself as an ‘ensemble of mental representations that surface as soon as people establish bonds that tie them to one another’. It can thus be defined as ‘the conscious states of mind connected to political action’; meaning that one cannot separate politics from ideology, nor dream of any sort of ‘pure’ politics: for every non-ideological policy would no longer be political. Ideology is ‘the manner in which men think, speak and write as soon as they practice politics’.
Ideological formulations may well, consequently, amount to a dozen of ‘nuclei’ which Mr Baechler equates to ‘passions’. He writes that a nucleus is ‘what we are left with once all formulations have been disregarded. And yet, what is left when all formulations, meaning all words, have been eliminated may well be nothing more than mere ideas or psychological impulses’ (This opinion converges with Pareto’s ‘residue’ doctrine). Mr Baechler proceeds to enumerate these ‘psychological impulses’ (which enjoy a reality of their own), these ‘quanta of mental energy that have achieved self-awareness’: one’s aspirations for liberty (one that leads either to liberalism or anarchism); the will to power (Prometheanism, scientism, expansionism); avarice or greed (productivism); vanity (elitism, nationalism); envy (socialism, collectivism); one’s taste for obedience (fundamentalism, conservatism); love (pacifism); rebelliousness (revolutionism); hatred (nihilism); pleasure (ludic behaviour); and others.
Defined as ‘a non-verbal nucleus whose mode existence is nonetheless verbal’, ideology takes on an even more inevitable aspect as a result of corresponding, on the one hand, to political action as a means of resolving conflicts that stem from the plurality of choices enjoyed exclusively by man, and, on the other, to the meaningful orientation of basic passions towards acquired values (by means of discourse), an approach that is also the exclusive domain of men, in the sense of being an ‘addition to nature’ and consequently the equivalent of culture.
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