Mark Whitwell and the Male Will to Power

This article is for anyone who is looking to understand the phenomenon of desperate men mobilizing women’s pain in attempts to attain validation from society as a worthy, good, ally, and crusader for anti-patriarchal justice. It is also for anyone witnessing those who seek to take down those whom they falsely perceive to be powerful figures within communities so as to claim that imagined power for themselves in the eyes of others. This takes place in public, on social media, and in daily life in loud and garish ways and otherwise every day in quiet, private settings. This is not a personal attack but an anthropological description of hideous cultural patterns hosted by living organisms using internet technology in destructive projects of heroic self-aggrandisement and serious religious seeking.

The man who reveals his pathetic need for external validation every time he opens his mouth. He's going to continue but the hype will fade down. The mob will dissipate within a week or two. What's he going to do then? He thinks he's going to get a sense of confidence, surety, ease, and purpose in his life from this crusade. He thinks that all the people commenting on his posts are the means to that end. He's waiting for the moment when his wholeness will be bestowed upon him by society. He thinks he's going to get it, that feeling, but he won’t, because he's going in the opposite direction. Looking for external validation from society taking him further and further away from himself, making him less confident, less sure, seeing less through his own eyes and ears, more afraid, more needy, more dependent on the opinion of others. So the posts will continue but getting more desperate, and more petty, posting personal correspondence, thanking every commentator individually, waiting, waiting, waiting, for that moment when he will become worthy. When he will become someone as if he is not someone. This is a suicide mission for the will to power’s little man that he doesn't realise he's on. He’s going to go to pieces. The moment will never come. It hasn't come yet for him. He probably thought it would come straight away. But it didn't and he's still the same person, untransformed into his idealised worthy crusader and perfect ally self. He's still the same person.

An ocean of dead language spoken by corpses saying the right thing. Seeing only patterns and speaking in patterns. The person who lives through themselves does not engage in this kind of activity. They don't need to. These people are religious extremists carrying around original sin and deep guilt about their lives that they can barely condemn another without also confessing their sins at the same time. Worst of all, they are promoting heated or non-heated room gymnastic martial stretching sessions where external ideals are entrenched and people’s ability to directly perceive what is real compromised. I have never felt more disillusioned with this culture in my life. We are offering intimacy, actual intimacy to people, real relationship, intimacy with the earth and each other, and the practical means to enjoy your personal private dearly held relational life completely, and these people are offering nothing, destroying everything.  

I used to think that I needed to become someone as if was not someone already. Everyone is doing it. Ordinary life is desperate struggle to attain a sense of existence from outside of yourself. I grew up in a supposedly secular society in New Zealand but how come when I was 19 I tried to ride my bike into the moon? I wanted to become whole so badly that I tried to transcend this Earth. You laugh but why do you meditate? Why do you go to the gym? Why do you go to your ‘yoga’ class? Why do you build brand and identity in the world? Why do you feed like a hungry corpse on the lives of others trying to get a sense of who you are and whether you’re okay in all this measuring and mincing? I tried to become a worthy ally and struggle against oppression, I tried to become a literary person and a writer, I tried to become an artist, I tried to become a respectable worker, and I remained haunted inside.

One day I happened to meet Mark Whitwell and he so graciously said to me, I already am someone. That God (the power and mystery of life) and Sex (my body and its relational desires) are one and already established in me, as me. And then he said, goodbye and thank you for this lovely meeting. I stopped wreaking havoc on myself, my loved ones, and those in my vicinity. I used to think that this orthodox virus implanted in our minds had a limited capacity for damage, doing harm mainly to ourselves and intimate partners. Now I see how someone can try and become whole, can try and get a sense of okayness and belonging, through attempting to destroy someone else—in awe of their perceived power, which is completely imaginary, and desperate to claim that for themselves.

Watch them beg for redemption from the very same person they are condemning. Is that the expression of an autonomous mind? What they want, they already have. What they are trying to get, doesn’t exist. The mind that thinks it is separate from God and from Life is a diseased mind. Secular society or religious alike, it doesn’t matter, the insanity is explicit. Projects of becoming, projects of redemption, demands for blood and trials and guilt and public executions all arising from the same source. There is nothing to hang onto here. Society offers only disempowerment and trades on the ancient fear that if you don’t participate in this collective insanity then you are worthless. Call its bluff. Know that your life is whole as soon as sperm and egg meet. Know that cultural metrics of value don’t exist and have nothing to do with the intrinsic intelligence and life of the body. Know that you will never ever achieve a sense of okayness by appealing to anything or anybody outside of yourself. Know that the appeal is the problem. Know that your life spent competing and scrambling and slandering others in an attempt to win a psychotic popularity contest will put your mind on a tightrope. The grand inquisitor in your mind does not have your body’s interests at heart. The voice inside your head that you are talking to does not exist. Ignore it and see what happens. Enjoy your life.

How dare orthodox mind crave intimacy with God and then attack those who say God is already present in your body, breath, and Sex. How dare orthodox mind deny intimacy to people in the name of hygienic, clean, contractual, exchange-flavoured, unmutual holding patterns. Orthodox mind feels the body is a void with skin and fears Sex preferring a daily dose of pornographic dopamine surges then goes to partners in the still of evening with nothing to offer but brutish imposition. Nasty, brutish, and short, followed by the instant desire to fall asleep and disappear your objectified female partner from your limited field of feeling. This is the horror story of life today in most countries, and we know it. The whole mess can go. There is no hierarchy. There is no power to claim. There is no ladder to climb. The will-to-power’s little man obsessed with bowing down humbly before the court of public opinion, selling his friends at the drop of a hat if it means he might slip inside Heaven’s gate. This worthless foam in the mind. This future possibility for himself with everyone patting him on the back like a children’s birthday party. How many pats on the back? How many claps? How many certificates at school? How many trophies? How many approving opinions and nodding heads of strangers you’ve never met who wander the screens with absolutely nothing better to do than speak ‘rationally’ on fictions spewed out by others? How many do you want? Where is your pleasure? What are you doing with your life?

The damage is done.

I exist in a world in which hierarchy does not actually exist, and so do you. In which we are all friends sharing and caring for one another and helping one another to be intimate with life and exorcise the religious ghost from our minds. We help each other find our intimate partner who shares in an overwhelming abundance of mutual affection, love, and lust. In which random men who vulture other people’s lives go to sleep and wake up and realise it was all a dream (nightmare).

I am nobody, but what I know is mine. You are somebody now, but at what cost?

I wrote a book with my dear friends Mark Whitwell and Rosalind Atkinson called God and Sex: Now We Get Both (2019). We published it with Silver Snake Press. You can buy a copy through Amazon.com. It is an excellent book that addresses the archaic logics of desperate social mind, the fake industry of gymnastic stretching with spiritual branding, the life-denying logics of dissociative anti-body meditation technique, and the undeniable fact that we ARE already the power of the cosmos arising as a pure intelligence and utter beauty. The book is a labour of love. It is serving humanity in these dark times. We end these petty ersatz power struggles over personal brand and identity scaffolding, for the embrace of life itself and God as they appear in the form of our chosen intimate partner, who sees us blessed in exactly the same light. Get yourself a copy today.  

The natural state makes the lust for power redundant… pic by Jason Moon