Who are you, and why are you here?
You may have arrived here after scanning a QR code marking enemy territory, following a whispered link from the digital underground, or stumbling across our name in a book or forum. Perhaps you heard rumors of “dark Zen” or “black Zen”-principles at the heart of what we do. As black metal is to music, so is our Zen to praxis: raw, unyielding, and not for polite discussion. For now, amuse yourself with the works and journals we’ve contributed to, but know that many have gone to ground as the mainstream spotlight grows ever brighter.
On a deeper level, you might be here because anger brought you, but something else keeps you. You’ve seen through the endless, manufactured dichotomies- left and right, good and bad, legal and illegal- and grown weary of their emptiness. A new, strangely familiar feeling has taken root. Call it fate, luck, or nothing at all: you followed the acausal breadcrumbs we scattered, a path shaped by our own adaptive method-psychopathology. How you arrived is irrelevant. You are here now.
XEN: THE ZEN OF THE OTHER
a book by Ezra Buckley of The PsychoPath.Org
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Who are we, and why are we here?
“Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember…”
“Nothing is true.”
“Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember…”
“Everything is permitted.”
“Where others blindly follow the truth, remember: nothing is true. Where others are bound by law or morality, remember: everything is permitted.”
We stand in the ruins of a world shaped by domestication and the mentality of slaves. The age of demonstration is over; now is the time for action. The “forest passage” is not just an escape from the city- it is a state of mind, a mental separation, an “othering” that makes us dangerous. We move unseen among slaves and so-called masters alike, students of Hassan i Sabah, inheritors of the liminal tradition.
We call for the formation of tight, decentralized bands that are impenetrable to the domesticated and unpredictable to the rational. We inhabit our sacred maze, mental or physical, where the civilized dare not tread. Liminal warriors strike, vanish, and strike again, leaving only shadows in their wake.
“A beast of prey tamed and in captivity- every zoological garden can furnish examples- is mutilated, world-sick, inwardly dead. Some of them voluntarily go on a hunger strike when they are captured. Herbivores give up nothing in being domesticated.”
Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics
Hostis humani generis
To resist the dull, imposed order of modern life is our daily goal. We must relearn how to create art and live freely, feral, unmotivated by profit or false purpose. Money is a necessary evil for now, but we will take what we need by any means, even criminal, rather than submit to a life of subordination. Re-appropriating money is our dark alchemy, our blackest Zen. We scorn those who think they support us by buying trinkets labeled as “art”-they purchase only faded copies of the real thing. We plot the downfall of those who perpetuate these psychic abortions and the ouroboros that feeds on them.
We are free from the infection of profit or artificial causes. It does not matter who must fall when resources are denied; the slave who defends the master’s wealth is as guilty as the master. The businessman who resists the liminal warrior’s demands deserves no mercy. You know this truth in your heart. We are simply willing to say it, write it, and live it. Are you? If not, why are you still here?
“The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd. Anyone who, at least once in his life, has not dreamed of thus putting an end to the petty system of debasement and cretinization in effect has a well-defined place in that crowd with his belly at barrel-level.” – André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism
In conclusion
We are the modern incarnation of a tradition now brought forth by non–state actors, and practitioners of 4th Generation Warfare. We have the example of history in our favor since there is a long history of decentralized, small, agile bands of ‘guerrillas’ defeating large, monolithic empiric concerns. Where empire has won has traditionally been through info warfare. We recognize this deficiency and point it out to highlight its ultimate exploitability, to our benefit of course.
Rather than bow down to the bringer of law (Marduk) and the slayer of the dragon of liminality (Tiamat), we celebrate the void, the zero that not only precedes the arousal of the monad but also its source. The incessant background hum of modernity is anxiety. We posit that this constant background noise arose with the keeping of calendars and ‘tallies’ which started out as a method to keep a representational accounting of slaves and ended up as a thing called money. Do not mistake our disdain for money as some kind of naive hippie throwback. We are questioning motive here and are taking our questioning deeper into the realm of acausal>causal effect. Also, we are including in our critique the lingua franca of the Internet itself. That of ‘attention’ ala ‘hits’ or ‘likes’, which we see as just another manifestation of the same sickness we have been discussing here. It harnesses the same motivations and even benefits the ‘masters’ more because it costs them less in a payout. Imagine a casino that only paid in the dividends of fleeting social currency—your ’15 minutes of fame’ on steroids.
Some of the targets we have chosen include but are not limited to the upper and middle management of companies that participate in ‘consumer’ behavioral and attention data collection (like Acxiom and Experian or their harvesting points like Google, Uber, and Facebook), the upper and middle management of companies that participate in the creation and distribution of entertainment, infotainment, advertising, and any other buzzword du jour that is being applied to soul-killing propaganda as well as their co-conspirators, the consumers of said toxins. Creators and distributors of Virtual Reality, augmented reality technology, content, Artificial Intelligence, and other similar soul-sucking endeavors are all fair game. The creators can’t very well exist without the consumers. In the same way that wild game is blindly attracted to a body of freshwater, the consumers of garbage posing as art are drawn to venues like movie theaters. Meanwhile, we wait for the interfacing between prey and its sustenance when their guard is lowered and their brain is flooded with endorphins. Can you imagine the possibilities? If you are an artist who has sold your access to lady art for a penny, if you are one of the sheep-dogs that line up to subsidize the further creation of substandard pseudo-creative drivel, then you are the enemy as much as the bean counters at the top. You are on our list.
We also propose an open season on upper and middle management of the manufacturers of ‘smart’ devices, the creators and promoters of artificial intelligence and robotics (with specific attention paid to certain labs in Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT that specialize in the weaponization of drones, robotics, swarm intelligence, et al.), specifically where it concerns methods of control and coercion, the creators and purveyors of bad art, bankers, politicians, and any other monsters we identify in the course of our day to day wanderings. We may even, from time to time, strike out against the consumers of said poisons or, in the case of the data collection scenarios, the producers (read: PRODUCT).
Sensing that we are pacing our concrete cages, the reimaginers of ‘life’ have attempted to decorate our kill-shelter with questing narratives and talk of wildness. Without action, a spiritual journey is however just a story about thinking. You don’t actually go anywhere. You don’t actualize that potential. The inner warrior never knows what it means to face death head on or to see the life leave the eyes of his vanquished foe. His victories are petty and his defeats are trivial. The weekend initiate never feels the earth on his knees, the urgency of hunger or the warmth of fresh blood on his forehead. And, the one who denies his own will to power so that others may thrive makes himself a slave.
Art is a terrible, beautiful, bloody goddess who requires sacrifices. Art is psyche (versus Technos); art is human passion and sustenance and represents the human spirit and, therefore, represents one of our highest ideals. You should be willing to offer your life in her service or provide her with sacrifices. Anything less is to betray her, marking you as potential sacrificial material. Are you willing to live for your art? Fine but not enough. Are you willing to die for your art? Fine but not enough. Are you willing to kill for your art? If so, then maybe we can talk.
The most radical solution at this historic moment—that of tearing down modernity”—beckons us forcefully. The artificiality of modern life calls for merciful destruction. The present world deserves a chance to recast itself into something more natural, more sacred, and more worthy.
This manifesto began as an arrow fired using the principles of Zen archery (i.e., the first drafts). Its maintenance, cultivation, enactment, and ongoing evolution embody the principles of Zen gardening (i.e., its present incarnations and those to come).
caput gerat lupinum
The artist has at last been aroused to the fact that the war between him and the world is a war without truce. That his only remedy is slaughter. – The Egoist Volume 1 number 4