One Glimpse

Hillel Halkin’s new book, Yehuda Halevi, is an exploration of the life and passions of this important Jewish figure of religious and philosophical significance. What this book tells us about the history of the medieval period in which he lived in Spain, however, is interesting in and of itself, and it is especially provocative in light of all the tortured attempts being made nowadays to cobble tougher a view of amicable Christian – Muslim – Jewish coexistence by referring to the ‘convivencia’ that existed in Spain before 1492. Convivencia means coexistence and the three faiths did indeed coexist in Spain during this period, but the coexistence that they enjoyed, endured, or suffered through, as the case may be, was hardly the Disneyland version of everyone holding hands and singing happy songs, each with his own little colored hat and matching flag.

Halkin explains how the great early 20th century archeological find of documents hidden away in the Cairo Geniza allowed historians to draw a picture of Jewish life in the Muslim world during exactly this period of history. What we know is that the periods of peaceful coexistence among the three faiths were punctuated quite frequently by a conquista or reconquista by either the Christian or Muslim side. The boundaries between the Christian and Muslim parts of Spain were forever shifting north or south depending on who had won the latest round. The Jewish population never took part in these wars, being a pacifistic community occupied with commerce and scholarship, primarily. But the Jews frequently ended up being displaced or slaughtered when the ruler to whom they had accommodated themselves suddenly was overthrown and replaced by the other side, thus exposing them to charges of collaboration.

This was the actual reality of convivencia, according to Halkin, not peaceful coexistence as an end unto itself, but as an interregnum merely until the next battle for territorial expansion. Why this should be so becomes clear if we read Halkin’s description of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims actually viewed themselves during this period. They did not see themselves as Spaniards, for there was no real concept of Spain as a country or nation, at that time. Spain was a geographical, linguistic, and cultural term. The most important reference point for a person’s identity, in fact, was his religion. And members of each religious group dreamed, when amongst themselves, of their group someday being dominant in all of Spain rather than having to rest content with only part of it.

Halevi’s writing makes clear that the Jews in Spain did not waste much energy in dreaming of conquering Spain or any place else they lived, being so down-trodden and defenseless themselves. What they did dream of, in their moments of idle fantasy, was restoring the Land of Israel to its former glory and to its former owners – the people who put that Land on the map, so to speak. It was the revelation at Mount Sinai that made the Jewish people a nation, but it was God’s promise to Abraham to show him the Land of Israel, and give it as a prized possession to his descendents that made that small piece of territory the important place that it has been now for thousands of years.

And it was to this small, but cherished piece of territory that Yehuda Halevi set out to spend his last years, leaving the comforts of Spain during its golden age, and then the comforts of Egypt – another flourishing cultural and economic center – to go to a land being contested by Muslim and Christian, and devoid of all but a small Jewish population.

This beautifully written and scholarly book really leads the reader to two unavoidable conclusions. The first is that the concept of convivencia, as used most commonly today by western liberals looking to promote peaceful coexistence between Muslim and non Muslims, is an illusion. It was coexistence of a sort, to be sure, but it was not peaceful if one takes a historical view of it. Nor was it meant to be. Neither Christians nor Muslims in Spain ever reconciled themselves to ruling over only part of the Iberian peninsula. Each wanted total dominion over the other and planned to achieve this over time, through the ambition of charismatic leaders and ideological factions.

Ultimately, the so-called “Catholic monarchs” of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella achieved the Catholic dream of uniting all of Spain’s regions under one monarchy and one universal church. The Jews and Muslims were expelled.
It was this emerging situation in Spain that most likely led Yehuda Halevi to the conclusion that the only solution to the fragility of Jewish existence was restoring the old homeland to Jewish sovereignty, starting by settling in it. This seemed so farfetched at that time when Jewish fortunes in Spain, Central Europe, and Crusader Palestine had declined to such a low ebb. However, one can easily see why Hillel Halkin identifies so much with Halevi, having – like him – abandoned the easy life in America for the struggles of living in a developing country like Israel of the 1970’s, that was also stuck in a permanent war zone.

This book also has a positive Zionist message to it, and one comes to the conclusion that this is probably why Halkin wrote it, thirty-three years after publishing his Zionist polemic, “Letters to an American Jewish Friend”. That book made the case for a Zionist-motivated immigration to Israel at a time when that message was doomed to fall on mostly deaf ears in the American Jewish community. However, this book has a more fateful and also more negative but realistic message to it, as its subtext, whether Halkin intended this or not (perhaps he didn’t).

Halkin is no right wing Likudnik, but neither is he the sort of person who was seduced by the fantasies of the Oslo peace process that led to the current situation of managed hostility that exists between the Israelis and Palestinians. The convivencia that existed in Spain was in no way a permanent peace between the contending religiously-motivated powers in Europe’s most important country, at that time. It was the temporary adjustment of permanent enemies to each other’s civilian populations, while the respective armies waged sporadic battles against each other for control of Iberia. The Christians ended up winning this long-term war of attrition, although the Muslims, initially at least, clearly had the more sophisticated civilization. The Christians won because they were more determined and more united, had better leaders, and because Islam simply went into long-term decline and could not sustain itself as an advanced civilization. The Jewish Golden Age in Spain was long-over by the time the expulsion edicts were finally signed in 1492, and Islam was well on its way to the state of decrepitude that still encumbers it today, while Christian Europe forged ahead on a path of development and conquest which didn’t groan its last sighs until the late 20th century.

This story may well have its mirror image in the Middle East today, with Israel as its new focus. A small but developing Jewish state surrounded by larger but fragmented, demoralized and decrepit Muslim powers has created a beachhead for itself by winning wars, and driving Arab populations away from its borders. Israel right now has no motivation to make any real concessions to two dysfunctional Palestinian polities ruled by corrupt and incompetent administrations. It should and probably will wait them out, until a major war eventually erupts and the Arabs flee in large numbers as happened in 1948 and 1967. The days of Islamic glory in el Andalus are gone and will never come back, while Yehuda Halevi’s dream of Jewish sovereignty has come true one thousand years after he wrote his love poems to Zion.

To end with Halkin’s rendering of Halevi’s famous poem:

My heart in the East
But the rest of me far in the West
How can I savor this life, even taste what I eat?
How, in the chains of the Moor,
Zion bound to the Cross,
Can I do what I’ve vowed to and must?
Gladly I’d leave
All the best of grand Spain
For one glimpse of Jerusalem’s dust

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A Weak People

Carl Schmitt quotes Vergil’s Fourth Ecologue at the close of his Der Begriff der Politischen (The Concept of the Political), “Ab integro nascitur ordo.” A new order is born from the renewal. Schmitt claimed that a world state could not exist, that such an attempt, where legitimacy rested primarily on economic means could and would lead to a dystopian world state — a system in which a people might be legitimately, according to this emerging economic order, be exterminated merely for being unable to pay their debts.

As Leo Strauss commented in response, Schmitt’s affirmation of the political “is nothing more than the affirmation of the moral” which is necessarily undermined by purely technological culture, such as that provided the anti-narrative mentioned in a previous essay (and also described by Strauss). While Schmitt ultimately falls back on a weak moral category, resistance, Strauss dissolves the possibility of the moral — there is no imperative.

Thus, we witness this dystopia emerging, not only in that the legitimacy of states is articulated by their ability to maximize the participation of their citizens in markets, as with Philip Bobbitt’s work, but where not only the default but also primary evaluative mechanism for the value of any thing, including human relationships, is in reference to personal (or corporate) utility.

Thus, in a world in which numbers, especially when cast as “science” in the field of economics, are the primary evaluative method, the default mechanism for evaluating the value of any relationship must accord with personal utility.  The same is true for all functions related to relationships (e.g. sex). Accumulation of partners may not be the goal, but, as specified by economic science, accumulation of ‘good moments’ likely will be, often taking the primacy of ‘fun’ (see our discussion of the fall of Batman).

This means that no-fault, previously the exception, becomes the norm. Every contract should be able to be broken by any party when the exchange of words/fluids leading to any other exchange is not kept. Which is to say, any purely quantitative system tends towards complete fungiblity as a ‘perfect’ state. Descriptions here serve a purely cosmetic function.  Any usage of word ‘marriage’ approaches a lie, as its origin and intention are not in keeping with the purely cosmetic function which it now serves. ‘Relationship’ would be closer to the truth, but really, any words are acceptable as the fundamental nature of the transaction and conceptions remains unquestioned.

Thus, each sphere of action becomes little more than a game, one should/must play to win in order to maximize. Is it permissible to use words with purely cosmetic function, allowing the other party to think according to old structures, while one embraces personally the new, the entirely economic? Certainly it does not make sense to be in the middle, embracing both new and old paradigm, neither fully. The probable answer within the means presented is, it does not matter — do what you need to succeed. Thus, not only do relationships and marriage cease to exist in any meaningful way, so also does the concept of a truth and a lie. There is only utility, which is frequently reducible to pleasure.

We will not comment at length on the moral salves available to those who wish to utilize them. Nicholas Kristof compares the estimated 800,000 trafficked each year with the 80,000 at the peak of the American slave trade, but advocates neither starting at home nor fundamentally rethinking, but more overseas initiatives (and lobbying!) for the globally connected. Anthony Daniels looks closer to home:

A hundred yards from where I write this, twelve-year-old prostitutes often stand under streetlamps on the corner at night, waiting for customers. The chief of the local police has said that he will not remove them because he considers that they are sufficiently victimized already, and he is not prepared to victimize them further (his job, apparently, being to empathize rather than to enforce the law). The local health authorities send a van round several times at night to distribute condoms to the girls, the main official concern being to ensure that the sex in which the girls take part is safe, from the bacteriological and virological point of view. It is the authorities’ proud boast that 100 percent of local prostitutes now routinely use condoms, at a cost to the city’s taxpayers of $135,000 a year, soon to be increased by the employment of a further outreach worker, whose main qualification, according to the recent job advertisement in the local press, will be “an ability to work non-judgmentally”—that is, to have no moral qualms about aiding and abetting child prostitution. Meanwhile, local residents (such as my neighbors, a banker, a lawyer, an antiquarian bookseller, and two university professors) who object to the presence of discarded condoms in their gardens and in the street outside their homes have been offered a special instrument with which to pick them up, in lieu of any attempt to prevent them from arriving there in the first place. And at the same time, the overwhelming majority of the work done by the social workers of the city concerns the sexual abuse of children, principally by stepfathers and mothers’ boyfriends who move in after biological fathers move out. (Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses)

In this arena one observes the previously ‘free-range’ people, the American homesteaders, struggling to adapt to their life gravitating in the same direction as the mechanized cattle industry, not realizing that the dictum “do unto others” has always related also to the animals around them. Neither die with or from a surfeit of artificial hormones, they simply cease to live in a meaningful way. Moreover, “resistance” is primarily a function of debates over cosmetics. Given this context, it is surprising they fight for the word or even discuss fighting for ‘marriage,’ a concept they have abandoned in every meaningful sense, just as they fight for “life” for those who, by virtue of physical infirmity or terrible situation will never have a “life” in any sense more than a simple binary assertion.

In fact, whether or not a copy of the Ten Commandments hangs in a courtroom matters not at all. What matters is the concept of jurisprudence applied within that courtroom, the basis of which has been abandoned for multimedia spectacles and megachurchs.  Should we be surprised when the spectacle ends and the citizens involved return to speculating on current and afterlife fortunes, rendering all attempts at “change” null and void? Or that the book supposedly at the center of their religious practice is primarily presented as tool to help them achieve this maximization?  Or that end times prophesies, the rapture, or the Jewish people are going to help them achieve this mystical jackpot?

While cattle ‘moo’ in their mechanized pens, Schmitt offers us this chilling reminder of the nature of the existential struggle which remains, even if covered in the shadows:

“If a people no longer possess the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear.”

As Clausewitz notes, it is the defender of the city who will and must be the first express violence if he wishes to be successful in his defense.  The arsonist with the torch can burn down an entire village if he is not first apprehended, and this apprehension will likely require an act of violence. But as Strauss also realizes, it is exceedingly easy to go from to this point to advocacy for “dangerousness” for its own sake.

Thus, the question is not simply what constitutes a weak people, but what constitutes a people, and the failure to ask the question and, perhaps, define what constitutes a people (or race) worth preserving ultimately undermines the strength of the people in question. Consequently, the quest for the definition of the political is necessarily a question of an ideal sense. Thus, we cannot reach it simply at the extremes, and to focus solely on the extreme case is to abandon the search for the political for politics.

Knowledgeable readers will know where this took Schmitt, and, indeed, it is emblematic of the whole struggle. Liberalism, as defined by Schmitt, must be separated from modernity, which is simply the necessary multiplication of loyalties on the basis of multiplicity of communities based on new forms of connectivity provided by technology. Which is to say, it is not necessarily an ideal, it is simply fiberoptic cables lying across the ocean floor and politicians suddenly able to talk on the phone.

Indeed, if merchants pursued this connectivity for its own sake, or for their sake, does this invalidate the connectivity? It is neither a barrier nor a help towards awareness; a multiplication of contingent loyalties is not necessarily an abrogation of a single essential one.

We then affirm the importance of the search for the essence of the political, and find that we must first, in the words of Rosenstock-Huessy, go back to Descartes, hoping that we may find a new order along the way.

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“Black Mass” Book Review

John Gray is a former professor of philosophy at Oxford and the LSE, and not to be confused with the pop psychology author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. In 2007 he published one of the most thought provoking intellectual works of the past decade. The title derives from the fact that a Satanic Mass takes Christian forms and inverts them – but, like Satan himself, the process takes its substance from Christianity. Gray’s thesis is that modern life is a Black Mass, and that the roots lie deep within Christianity itself. The latter, right from its origins, was apocalyptic and utopian. Most religions lack a linear sense of history, or indeed any conception of a beginning and end time. Salvation, if perceived at all, is largely seen as as release from an unending worldly round. Christianity injected teleology- history has a purpose and an end time, when its purpose will be fulfilled. This to some extent predates Christianity, with Jewish and Iranian roots, but Christianity is the vehicle by which such thinking was spread to the wider world.

This is familiar stuff, but Gray’s contribution is to examine at length the pervasiveness of the apocalyptic utopianism. Millenarian movements recurred from time to time in medieval history, but were constrained by the institutions of the Church (notably the Inquisition) and by Augustinian original sin, which precluded or at least limited the belief that life on this earth could be perfected.

In modern times, these constraints were loosened by two developments. The first was Protestantism, which never had as effective a machine to define or constrain “heresy” as the Catholics. Thus it spawned milleniarist movements by the score, who sought to build the City of God upon the Hill – including, tellingly, a key strain in American culture. Europe chose other forms of Christian heresy, secularism (the term has no meaning outside of monotheism, until the City of God was separated from the City of Man). If so far you have thought that this is yet another anti-religious tirade, then Gray is at his most venomous when discussing the secularist heresies. The totalitarianism of the Left, from the Jacobins to Stalin, makes an easy and familiar target, the apocalyptic myth a crude parody of Christianity. Nazism is often seen (notably by Isaiah Berlin, Gray’s erstwhile mentor), with its emphasis on Kultur , as a lineal descendant of the (largely German) Counter Enlightenment. In fact Gray makes a good case that it was another Enlightenment –influenced apocalyptic heresy, if a somewhat bizarre one (salvation only for Germans); certainly Hitler would not have been possible without Lenin.

Gray, however, implicates as well the most benign and successful Enlightenment belief system, liberal democracy. Though apparently tolerant, it still seeks to convert everyone on the planet – at gunpoint if necessary; there follows a lengthy section on the Iraqi tragi-comedy and the “War on Terror”, where ex-Marxist neocons formed an unholy alliance with the American Christian right. The other unexpected target is Islamism. Sayyid Qutb, the Karl Marx of the movement, was well versed in Western philosophy and impressed by Nietzsche it seems – hardly the traditional Muslim by any means. The latter would accede to Allah’s will, not actively seek to build the perfect Caliphate in an all-too-Western mimicry of the Christian reformation. No wonder it all appeals to disaffected educated Muslims in the diaspora, and spoilt rich kids from Saudi construction magnates.

Demolition is easy, but what to do? Turning one’s back on religion is not the answer: Gray believes that it is innate in humans, and if thwarted simply finds unconscious paths, as described above; indeed he feels that Dawkin’s style atheism is distinguished by its intellectual crudity. Christianity and Islam, historically the two most aggressive and intolerant faiths, demand belief – while others are content to stand in awe before mystery, and perhaps to commune mystically with it. Meanwhile, realism rather than idealism can rule the everyday world.

All very sensible, but the objection is: who wants to live in a sensible world? It would be uncreative and rather dull. The Western world (which has now infected the rest) is like a manic depressive, whose creative highs justify the depressive and destructive lows. Fine until the depression verges on suicide: Gray clearly feels that we are near the latter, as the book ends with an environmentalist tirade. Perhaps,or else he is no more immune to apocalyptic religion than others: or else, with no utopias left to believe in, it is time for Western(ised) man to grow up.

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Finding Freedom

Danny Suarez’s second novel is a blood and guts laced techno-thriller that will probably not make much sense without knowledge of his earlier book, Daemon, in which he outlines his vision of a “botnet” powered by a potentially benevolent AI. If this doesn’t already make sense to you, you might want to stop here. In Freedom, this AI has designed an online game in which accrued in-game status points somehow allow real word powers; this game is extended towards creating real world self-sufficient sustainable communities, which thus end up in a defensive war against the evil overlords of capital.

As with many of the described possibilities in the book, though many are permutations of existing or soon to exist technologies, Suarez’s descriptions range from fanciful and interesting to completely ludicrous — largely because of his purposeful blending of virtual and real worlds.

This blending, however, and his description of the world as blending has merit. “The core of our civilization” is capital, commerce, states one of the antagonists, “That no longer means gold bars in a vault; it means ones and zeros in a database.”

As real and virtual have mixed, so have spirit and real worlds. What is the the solution? Not a transcendent God, rather a new god created “out of the popular will of millions of people” — itself a machine. We need to be ruled, the author indicates, but we can create our own god, or will it into existence, thus mobilizing the masses and putting an end to the “corporate domination of culture and media.”

Thus, we are saved from potential dystopia by embracing tech-laden fantasy, one which goes far beyond the possibility of the real in search of a god that can save us from the disaster which, as the traditional accounts would have it, we have wrought with our own hands. Freedom is a very valuable thing, but it has not been stolen and trademarked without our consent — we have sold it for a few baubles and no new tech trinkets will bring it back.

Moreover, the baubles exchanged for are much what the author offers us, more or less constant titillation in the form of graphic descriptions of what happens when the various spinning blades attached to various combat robots meet human flesh, an event which happens quite frequently, or technological wet dreams, including, at its root, the fantasy that a new “spiritual” machine can somehow liberate us from the corporate one.

Technology, in the end, is nothing but levers and cranks, hanging chads, ones and zeros — nothing to build a society off of. The more we use it to also fulfill spiritual needs, the more likely we will be bound by fantasy.

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Clausewitz and the End of Europe

A review of Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre by René Girard.

As stated at the outset, this book is focused on mimetic rivalry in French-German relations, leading to a total war largely already completed, and the apocalypse described as more or less already with us, including the vapidity of contemporary American culture, a vast ecological crisis, and a necessarily ensuing conflict between the United States and China. Substantial principles relative to this are that political dynamics of the past two centuries, including both French and Prussian nationalisms which he claims were largely defined implicitly against the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic church – which, perhaps together, present the only possibility of resolving this mimetic tension (the ‘how’ is never elucidated).

Clausewitz, then, is a productive illustration of this dynamic, largely because his entire venture is defined implicitly against Napoleon — his drive towards the apex of enlightenment thinking, including a rational exposition of all elements of war reveals, in its shadow, the utter irrational, passionate, and mimetic aspect of warfare, including those which, despite his ostensibly rational intentions, persist in Clausewitz’s actions and private statements. This is most clearly revealed in the double metaphor offered in the opening statements of his masterpiece, in which Clausewitz refers to war as a duel, then qualifies and describes wrestling as a better metaphor. The duel, as Girard correctly observes, inevitably escalates on the basis of mimetic violence and passion, whereas the wresting match is over when the rational objectives of one party have been attained and the other is reduced to submission.

As stated above, this irrational, mimetic aspect of violence necessarily leads to an escalation in violence leading to total war, in which there are ultimately no victors. The Christian response, as exposited by Girard, is necessarily withdrawal and complete abstention from violence. The mimetic mode for the Christian is to follow the Christ in his withdrawal from society, rather than the pagan, which imitates other men (“vengeance”), but contains no means for approaching God. In this sense, it is Hölderlin who best typifies the appropriate response within the context of European of the past two centuries — especially his late Christian phase (e.g. Patmos) passed over by many commentators. Consistent with this point, Girard criticizes violent acts by Christians, such as the crusades, as a reversion to archaic elements of religion, and sees the previous pope’s public acts of repentance as figurative of a new more Christian era.

Along the same lines, all statements of heroism post-Napoleon are corrupted by their assessment of the potential “fecundity of violence,” which is expressed as potentially redemptive because of the prospect of recapturing the hallowed State, as found in Hegel, Schmitt, and also Nolte. His critique of Levinas is that, while he successfully describes the violent nature of all ontology, he thought we could escape with recourse to “the pure experience of pure being” which fails to address or confront the essential and necessarily mimetic nature of rivalry — this is to say that he attempts to construct a harmonious community without first addressing the fundamental human aspects of the participants in this community, ultimately a “dried up humanism” without humans.

Despite Girard’s promise at the outset, he never properly addresses apocalyptic texts, or, at least, those foundational to the Christian tradition. His pro-Catholic polemics, especially in favor of papal infallibility are unlikely to be convincing to those not already convinced, and his scapegoat theory remains in certain respects somewhat dubious and incomprehensible. These criticisms aside, Girard articulates, perhaps better than any since Clausewitz, the essential elements of war, and exposition of French-German relations, including the potentiality that currently hangs over Europe is generally correct, if ultimately failed since, as Plato expounds, all political unions rest necessarily on their ability to commit acts of violence — something Girard denies to the Christian.

The author recently returned to the United States from Israel where he was studying theories of war.

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Surviving the Economic Collapse

Review of The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse by Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre

With the economic turbulence that began in earnest in 2007, there has been a renewed interest from surprising quarters in what was once the domain of fringe groups and disgruntled Vietnam veterans. In the 70′s “survivalism” became an undercurrent and a catchall for disciplines as varied as defensive pistol shooting and organic gardening, covering an amazing array of interests. Today’s version has been noticed by a far greater slice of the general population, as evinced by firearms and ammunition sales in the US and an unquantifiable but widely acknowledged upswing in the sales of tactical gear, homesteading equipment, water purification kits and the other detritus of a modern day, hardware-fueled urban consumerist that just gained an appreciation of how hard things can fall.

For such folk, the temptation is inevitable- the tendency is to buy specialized weapons, gadgets and tools and to think in terms of “bugging out” and leaving to some remote mountain retreat. Most thought is still largely driven by thinking prevalent during the previous surge in interest, perhaps a variation on being prepared to fight the last war . Into this maelstrom of buying, selling, and fantasy scenarios that bear little resemblance to reality comes Fernando Aguirre’s The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse. A witness of and participant in the Argentinean economic crisis of 2001-2002, Aguirre watched his first world, urbane and educated society slip with frightening speed into a state of turbulence that produced conditions more readily found in the darker bits of the third world. Pockets of general lawlessness and an upswing in crime were right on the heels of economic paralysis as the government attempted to handle a frightening debt situation with devaluation, depegging of the peso to the dollar, and de facto seizure of economic assets. With alarming speed, the currency devalued to a quarter of its original value, and many secure urban professionals found themselves contending with circumstances for which they were dramatically unprepared.

Going into this experience, Aguirre had a modicum of preparation that turned out to be exceptionally useful, including a background with an early education in firearms, unarmed combat and backpacking, which alone can be tremendously useful if for no other reason that it strongly encourages fortitude and self reliance. More importantly, Aguirre was able to adapt to and learn from his situation quickly enough to come out of the situation comparatively intact, no small feat considering the breadth of skills that had to be assimilated. Mindset, awareness of the shadowy world around you, improvisation, even inculcated reactions to incidental confrontations on the street, all had to be retrained in the environment of the new reality. He credits his transformation to his willingness to never quit, to persevere, to adapt, improvise and overcome- and indeed stresses this as the primary tool for anybody in any situation of the gravest extreme.

Police involved shootings, stories of survival in the wilderness, accounts of war and even incidents of grave injury all show this as a common and critical element – a firm belief that, come what may, you are going home when this is over, and that you are going to make it for those you love. Aguirre’s motivation to prevail is the foundation upon which all other efforts are built, and they should be for anybody. As someone of repute once said, when man has a why, the how follows. Aguirre gets this.

Though he does go into the kit he found useful in a comprehensive manner, he is not what some disreputable musician-types refer to as a “gear queer,” and stresses finding what works for you, not what just came out on the cover of “Survivalist Monthly.” He travels light (though as an aside, I would love to compare contents of our everyday bag, and see who can go for more function with less weight), and insists on what police learn very quickly: you are most likely only going to have what you habitually, physically carry on you to deal with an emergency or emergencies when the feces strikes the rotating oscillator (hereafter referenced, as in the book , as SHTF) . He also seems to have an appreciation for tailoring the tools for the job, and recommends some of his favorites, what worked, and what didn’t.

This actually expands into a wider ethos of self reliance for Aguirre, as he notes that if one is serious about preparation for hard times, physical conditioning and what is essentially preventative maintenance on your own body need to be addressed while they may be. One might encounter considerable exertion and much more scarce/expensive medical attention in such environs, and what crises that can be averted or attenuated ahead of time, should be. Similarly, any deficits in knowledge should ideally be addressed in the good times There will inevitably be a very steep learning curve established immediately after things begin to get ugly, and realizing the paramedics aren’t coming after you’ve fallen and broken a leg is no time to learn how to splint. Aguirre advises taking at least basic first aid and CPR courses (easily located by contacting the Red Cross), and if possible, further training in an EMT/trauma mold as it may be available.

Hand in hand with this emphasis on preventative training is his insistence that one take charge of the most basic element that the state must provide to maintain viability, and what is frequently the first thing to fail after mass crisis: personal security. Aguirre maintains that all categories of crime became much more prevalent, with robberies, kidnappings and “commando style” home invasions a common occurrence. Concurrently, police response became slower and at times nonexistent, leaving law abiding people with no particular preparation as vulnerable to assault as sheep in the face of wolves. Notably, Aguirre encourages the sheep to become sheep dogs, and have a positive impact on their entire area.

Aguirre spends about a third of the book on self defense, covering a wide range of subjects that include improvised weapons, tactical driving, empty hand styles and pistol shooting. Again, his intent is not to give exhaustive instruction, but to communicate some tips and the occasional tricks picked up in his own training or from experience where it mattered. He does well to consider a multidisciplinary approach and stresses the importance of force on force training against an opponent with intent, something sorely missing among the legions of dojo ballerinas that buy a black belt and expect the enemy to attack in a very obliging, very narrow range of action. Aguirre knows this is a good way to get your head pulled off like a crayfish.

In fact, Aguirre has a rather good handle on what works, and clearly pays attention to the words of older and wiser men (something that can sure save one some stitches). In the whole of this section, I found only a single element where he mentions something that I find to be aiming in the wrong direction, and to prove just how deep one has to look and how nitpicky I would have to be to truly find any fault with the whole of his effort as regards self defense, I will address Aguirre’s section on boxing and knockouts in general. You will see what I mean.

Boxing is the first skillset for empty hand that Aguirre recommends, and indeed it was the first formal unarmed training I received. However, after considering the counsel of various teachers in aikido, competitive breaking and the styles perhaps best typified by John Perkins’ Ki Chuan Do, I came to alternate conclusions than I learned on the heavy bag .

Aguirre indeed puts considerable weight on boxing and the idea of a knockout blow, and while he does relay the repeatable actions that can lead to consistent knockout, I feel he goes astray here for two reasons. First, a closed fist to the head, unless targeted very precisely , is just as likely to injure the hand as it is to achieve knockout and second, such precision is a low-percentage shot . While such targeting is considerably easier to acquire ( and less likely to injure the striker) with proper training, the fact remains that the opportunity to deliver a knockout blow is far more often a product of a closed ring with consistent stances, distances and intent than it is on the street . Amateur and pro boxers routinely break knuckles , and always fight with the benefit of wrapped and taped hands inside of protective gloves , something that will be lacking in the street .

Any resulting injury is not only going to limit options for the remainder of the incident (if any) but will also be a serious handicap in the weeks and months it will take to heal- time when you can ill afford the incapacitation under the conditions mentioned. And that assumes it will heal properly to begin with, something altogether uncertain considering a quarter of all the bones in the body are in the hands, with the resulting specialization and fragility. I like to make a point this way: if you were challenged to hit a concrete wall with your hand with as much force as possible, without hurting your most important tool, how would you strike?

If you say with anything but the heel of the hand, you really ought to spend a few weeks in a cast to encourage remedial thinking. Any place a fist can injure, a palm heel can devastate. The same force that yields a knockout punch might tear a mandible completely out of the socket. Knockout is not a byproduct of striking a nerve in the chin and sending a consciousness-negating signal to the brain. It is a byproduct of an inertia rebound (either at acceleration or deceleration) of the brain off the interior of the skull, or alternately, brief interruption of blood flow to the brain. Any sudden impact to the head can set up such rebound- the goal is quick transmission of force, something that can be more readily accomplished with the hand open.

As well, many fights can be defused even very late in the game, and adopting an aggressive, fists-balled posture is telegraphing intent and possibly making a fight a self-fulfilling prophecy. With hands open toward a potential attacker, you appear conciliatory or at least unprepared, when in fact you are that much closer to performing a grab that turns into a grapple, or an open hand soft tissue strike following the palm heel, like eye rakes/gouges, ” fish hooking” and ear tears. Hey, nobody said soft tissue on the head was sacred. Destroy the opponent and preserve your weapons. Think long term.

Other than that bit, which seemed to stick out in prominence because the rest of the defense advice was largely so sound, I could find nothing to correct or critique. He sees the force continuum appropriately. In the gravest extreme, you must always be prepared to take it to the next level of force if you would ultimately prevail or fall, and Aguirre, again, gets this.

Another note: Aguirre goes at some length into the proper selection, carry and use of a knife, drawing again from force on force training and the colorful past of the gauchos, hard bitten Argentinian cattlemen from the pampas that lived and died on the points and edges of their facon. The knife is something that does not get much attention in the West, as it is a brutal weapon more commonly associated here with Jack the Ripper and OJ Simpson than a decent person trying to stay alive. This is a foolishness that emergency will ill afford, as a knife is a tremendous close quarters tool, something that can be both hideously effective and omnipresent, often allowed in places where a gun is not permitted. Proper intent above all else matters with the knife, as it is a hard business to carve into another human being , no matter how ornery they may be; but once that line has been understood and kept in perspective, a blade can be more lethal than a pistol. Again, Aguirre gets this.

Besides the heavy and warranted emphasis on defense, Aguirre relates some tips and tricks of storing what you use as foodstuffs and household items. He advocates getting as much as you can afford, in terms of money and storage space, of what you already use, always with an eye towards securing items in a way that will preserve utility. As well, he deals with what might be handy to have around in a compromised economy, items such as small bits of gold (NOT bullion or coins) and foreign currency that may be more valuable than toilet paper. The tips are still valuable, though, if nothing else than they paint a picture of an economy driven by need and ingenuity, developing in the shadows of the official (non-functioning) economy. It is quite a leap from there to the Road Warrior (though Bartertown from the third Mad Max movie does get an honorable mention), something most survival authors usually miss because they simply haven’t been there. Again, Aguirre has.

It would be very difficult to even mention all the angles brought up in the book, as it is comprehensive in its approach in a way that an abstract relation of facts and techniques can never be. This is the life experience of a determined man relayed in sometimes less than perfect English, a snapshot of how he handled waking up one day to find that his country wasn’t really there any more. However, if you are looking for instruction in specific disciplines with a thorough, specialist’s focus in any of the fields Aguirre mentions, there are better books to be had. If you were to have only one comprehensive manual collating likely details and tables that might be needed into a one-volume survival library, this would not be it. However, Aguirre’s Modern Survival Manual is a great beginning in the pursuit of finding out how to stay alive when it seems God might not want that as much as you do.

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Darwinism: it ain’t what it used to be

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