The Real Reason Why "Trads" Always Lose
The ideology of traditionalism is probably correct, but the execution... not so much.
When I first started posting content on this sphere of the internet, there was a huge surge of accounts pushing “traditionalism”, and for me, at that time, it was incredibly hopeful to see all of them trying to recover lost values of the past and reject the allures of modernity.
This was new to me at the time. I had just started going down this rabbit hole and it just made a lot of sense. I saw all the pictures, video edits, and articles promoting a traditional lifestyle, one based strongly on past times and circumstances that are no longer, and felt deeply connected to this ideology.
After a few months, something in this sphere changed. What was once a very positive side of the internet became fragmented, and different factions started to appear from what was once just one big group of people holding similar values and fighting against the “progress” that has caused so much damage.
One of the biggest raptures was caused by a —valid, IMO— point of criticism from some of the proponents of a more vital masculinity against the “trads”, which led lots of men became disenchanted with the “traditionalist” movement, from what I’ve seen, because of 3 main reasons.
The unrealistic nature of the movement. “We need to go back”, claim traditionalist accounts. And yet, to anyone who has eyes to see, it’s clear that it’s not possible to go back. What ends up happening is that becomes a masturbatory nostalgia, in which we daydream about times that are dead and gone, and that we never even lived. It’s impossible to recreate what once was, and fixating on a dead past does no good in creating a better future. This is strictly connected to the second point.
It feels too much like “giving up”. A core tenet of the “trad” movement is the ideal life it promotes: an isolated one, in which a man is free to leave the contaminated cities and raise his family in peace up in the mountains, close to God and close to nature. And yes, this is incredibly tempting. But we need to realize there is no such peace in a world controlled by evil. Eventually, if evil is left unchecked, it will come and find you, even if you isolate yourself and leave the battlefield. If all the good men rode off into the sunset, there would be no one left to fight the corrupt devils that hold all the positions of power, and they would end up conquering everything. Our time does not allow for a man to raise his children in peace. He can either fight, or give up and wait for the thought police to arrive at his doorstep, and it will eventually.
The disregard for the human potential of achievement. The trad movement pushes for an easy life. And again, I understand how tempting it is to leave behind all the stresses of modernity. But an easy life is not fit for a man. An easy life will not bring you the purpose you dream of. What will bring you that purpose is the everlasting pursuit of greatness. Even if you fail. Buying a farm, having chickens and cows, a wife and a couple of kids to spend your days close to nature sounds amazing on the surface, but you would go crazy after some time of this. A man needs to strive ever upwards to the highest peaks for his soul to be at peace. The trad movement fails to realize this.
I am not a “trad”. I think that term is too simplistic and doesn’t allow for a deep, sound philosophy. I respect a lot of things from the traditionalist movement, but I refuse to let myself become one of the many men whose biggest dream is to abandon the battlefield of life.
Besides, a fatal mistake I’ve seen too many traditionalists make is that they long too strongly for past times. And while I understand the appeal of daydreaming about eras long gone in which a man was free to act as a man should, and in which the space we inhabited brought us closer to God, we need to understand that the past is dead and it will never be resurrected.
No amount of “trad” content will ever bring back the culture that we bastardized and burnt to the ground. Maybe this past that we still long for was doomed from the beginning.
There can be no isolated pockets of traditional and virtuous culture in the middle of a world as degenerate as ours. Both are completely incompatible, and eventually the great androgynous monster of modernity will engulf everyone who’s so naive as to believe that he’ll be left alone to raise his children in peace.
Until we exterminate every last cancerous cell on this planet, they will come for us. There is no running away from this.
They will surround you with windowless buildings. They’ll tear down your forests and build concrete roads. They’ll dim out the sunlight with thick layers of gray smoke. They’ll build schools in which they can turn your sons gay and teach your daughters to be whores.
Whatever was good in the past can no longer exist. Not now, and not ever. We fucked up too bad and destroyed everything that was once beautiful. The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can get to work in building a future in which not everyone you cross paths with on the street has contemplated suicide at least once.
Traditionalism fails to recognize that we cannot, and don’t need to go back.
We need to go forward, into a new era that resembles the glory of the past. But we cannot fall prey to the masturbatory nostalgia of longing for times that are no longer possible.
Only then might we enter a new age of heroes, fight this bloody war, and leave behind what will surely be known by our descendants as the darkest age in the history of mankind, to be free to exist in a more natural state, and build a new world based on the traditions that we desperately need to recover.