The Way I See It...

“Brethren and sisters of my circle
I acclaim thee all
When guiding stars are
clouded and deranged
Fear not to take my hand”
- Isahn









If you learn about history you will realize very quickly how incredibly lucky we are to be alive. today. To have the prosperity and resources to potentially engage with virtually all of the significant cultural achievements in the history of humanity. I’m not saying this to endorse some form of nationalism but wanted to start some sort of debate here on the question of how people here spend their time and how you justify that.
I reject careerism. I reject the pursuit of money as a valid path of personal development. I reject the status of society. The way I see it Obama, Harper, our elite are simply some dudes that were semi randomly placed to make this whole thing function, and they aren’t that good at it either. But for who? or for what? For people like you and me.
The truly great people I admire and want to follow are: the autodidactic, the wanderer, the saint- people concerned with the whole. There is no set career path to this end but it is a far more grand and epic approach to life! Discipline yourself! Craft yourself into the ideal person you envision! Morally, physically, intellectually. Suffering makes noble. That is the German word for passion: leidenschaft. Become a human being that is new and unique - who gives themselves laws! Start reading books of great wisdom and more importantly begin applying these in your day to day life.
This is the culture we should be nursing.
This is why I reject politics. Its a waste of time to try to change the world - nothing can be done (if your not in that position). Utopia is nihilism. All politicians from Hitler to Hillary Clinton at some stage in their career vehemently claim they have found the truth. Well, have they really?
That the reason I reject compassion. Compassion is the cross he who loves mankind is nailed to - as someone once write. Most people who affirm compassion aren’t really compassionate and those that really are I wouldn’t hinder. Let them be crucified!!! Pursue what most people do not understand: the intangible. Reach for a higher state of existence!
Drop out of university or only study part time. Academia is too expensive and requires specialization if it is to pay off.
Engage with other cultures and don’t simply become what your culture has taught you to be.
If you can find the money: travel! Live for extensive periods of time in other places. As Goethe wrote: he who knows one language knows none.
Live cheaply and don’t get sucked into an expensive lifestyle. Money is useful and that about it. Wealthy elitist type people who think their better because they are rich don’t know where its at. Just take a look at all the celebrities and people our society celebrates. These people are dysfunctional and full of problems. Bono himself is a Jenkem addict. (google this for more) and certainly do not represent a higher human type.
Surround yourself with people and friends who understand, appreciate and accept you for what you are. Internally.
Rigorously exercise every day.
Go for long slow walks by yourself.
Eat healthy food and live somewhere near nature.
Explore the institutions of other cultures.
Defy yourself in everything you do.
Find out what you are passionate about. Passion is more important than reason and one of the only emotions that truly justifies existence.

And where does this lead? What will you achieve? You ask.
You know you have overcome yourself, your time and your contemporaries when you are completely alone. Fuck everything else!

Black Metal as Spiritual Exercise Pt II

What is thought? Is thought not the means via which we cognitively emulate that which happens in reality? When someone tells me the fortress cannot be stormed I will evaluate that persons claim by imagining ways in which the fortress could be taken. And since the laws of the world conform to the logic cognitively at my disposal, I do not necessarily have to test my ideas in praxis. I simply need to think.
As such, it is legitimate to claim that things which exist for very long times (such as for instance the ruins of the city Ur) have been subject to the laws of the world as though a very rudimentary force has been trying to perpetually test ways to which it’s ziggurat might not withstand. This, metaforce acting in the world, is present everywhere. It isn’t something tangible but something we abduce by observing what is given. Friedrich Nietzsche described architecture as mans triumph over gravity. Gravity is an instantiation of this metaforce. A law of the world that just as a thinking person, though not self reflexively and definitively slower, attempts to critique everything which comes to be. The world thinks. It thinks like a nihilist. A universal consciousness, an Urgeist that seeks to outdo everything humanity will create.
In the words of Goethe’s Mephistopheles: “Ich bin ein teil von jener kraft die stehts das Boese will, doch stehts das gute schafft. Ich bin der Geist der stehts verneint, und das mit recht. Denn alles was entsteht ist es werd das es zugrunde geht. “
We human beings are not at war with ourselves. We are at war with the urgeist and there are moments everyone has experienced when they have triumphed over this most ancient of physical laws. Black metal provides us with a clear path towards transcendence. It is an art form that, at its highest, presents us with experiences which Goethe’s Faust called” verwahre doch, du bist so schoen.” Moments in which Faust could say that’s it. I’ve found it! Damn my soul to the devil. Most of our treadmill squirrel trap culture contemporaries seek this experience in false dreams presented to them by adverts and consumerism but there is universal tendency amongst our race, we who strive to be immortal, to playfully create and imbue existence with experiences that we want to continue - eternally. Friedrich Nietzsche in what he describes as the greatest thought he ever had, presented us with a clear path towards evaluating everything that confronts us. Black metal included. It is the thought of the eternal return (Gay Science Aphorism II) This, the greatest of ideas is the supreme test of all that we can experience. Black metal included...
“Only the dead have seen the end of war” writes Plato. It is time the human race united not against itself but against the urgeist. It is time the human race began thinking. In the words of DJ Goat: “Eternity if yours, if you make the infinite real.”
- Wahn

Black Metal as Spiritual Exercise

One of the many consciousness benefits attained through intensive study of certain meditation discplines (such as Zazen) is an awareness of and competenced in dealing with pain. Although this might sound grim, the basic idea is not. Zazen for instance requires, if practiced seriously, sitting quietly in the lotus posuter for 90 minutes. Serious zen students (myself incluced) do this regularly (perhaps 4times a year) 5 times in a day (with breaks) on top of our usual weekly meditation regimen. These are called zen nights at some dojos and ojne cannot complete a zen night withouth having to quietly sit, meditating on ones aching body. At some statge sduring the zen night, physical pain will peak and the student will have to exert their will. Attention is brought onto iones breath and eventually the physical pain will fade. One enters a new and to many unknown level of consciousness.

Many of the individuals I have known who have for extensive parts of their life been deeply absorbed in black metal have a certain strength and ability to confront problems other individuals lack. Black Metal, like zazen, is a spiritual exercise. Our genre teaches people to go beyond immediate thoughts that might arise in difficult circumstances, to concentrate on the situation until it even becomes beautiful.

This willingness to struggle is a fundamental feature of any high culture. Not to sound chauvinistic, indeed, Friedrich Nietzsche himself opposed war for the very simple fact that it acts as a distraction from what is really important: self cultivation. Self mastery. Our society has lost touch with this principle. If you look at anything from cuisine to the most valued cultural achievements of our time you will find an element of artificiality that is based upon molding the world into what is convenient. Not to say that this is a reason to reject all of “modern society” – I take off my hat to anyone who has understood the historical opriogins of this very interesting experiement - but this patent observation does call for a solution. The rare and gifted individuals always exemplify certain degree of artifstic and personal perfection that they try to tacitly communicate in their work. People today, regardless of how stupid or intelligent they are, have generally forgotten to appreciate the pursuit of perfection. From politics, through film to the music industry, all of which resemble each other in that they are far away from anything that could ber called a meritocracy, are nothing but attempt to conform to the most convenient behavioral patterns as experienced by the majority of people. This spiritual sloppiness has found itself all the way to the hallowed halls of learning. Psychology as a discipline has even defined the healthy individuals based on studies of ordinary men and women as opposed to the exceptional. Our philosophers, people like peter singer, confidently claim that “pleasure is the only thing of intrinsic value” The ideal human being today is the ultimate couch potato and Friedrich Nietzche knew this when he wrote that “democracy is the tyrrany of the evil men”

Black metal as a genre stands “as a stone in the stream of our time” to use the words of Evola. We, the NMRG, are working to establish as serious and committed sub culture here in Toronto where individuals can free themselves of careerism, petty greed and forced specialization to pursue and cultivate our art. Black Metal. We are not some shallow “radical” political organization many of whom have and will accomplished nothing of substance. The NMRG stands in defiance to the status quo when we call upon the GTA scene to:
- Educate and discipline itself
- Produce and celebrate talented musicians
- Refuse to endorse incompetence
- Seeing value in things that cannot be paid for
- Stop attending shows by morons such as inertia entertainment who want nothing of our genre but money

And what makes some music better than others? Hwo do we justify our plroubdly explaimed elitism? Black metal is not friendly. We are not a culture that wants to be happy. It is the eternal that we are after. Musicians that will write albums still heard in generations to come, individuals so healthy they will outlive most others, minds so absorbed in the history of though that they cannot be called subjective. In the words of DJ Goat of KCUF radio: “Reach to eternity and you will find the end: the end of life, the end of vision, the end of existence itself.” To us, this is the most beautiful sight. It is this union of good and evil that makes black metal a spiritual exercise. We strive to be immortal and revel in its impossibility.

Is overpopulation a problem? How many people leading which type of life can this planet sustain indefinitely? The latter is a question that has been asked surprisingly seldom. Clear however is that throughout the recent history of our planet, human population has grown significantly, whilst environmental resilience has declined. Since environmental science has shown that our planet is under stress the majority of the literature focuses on reducing consumption whilst forgetting that only the “lack of a consumer means no consumption at all.” Indeed, for practically purposes it makes sense to define a human being as someone who consumes.
Nonetheless, there is debate surrounding the question of how many people this planet can support. It has to be noted that 20% of the world's peoples are consuming 80% of the earth’s resources which raises the question of quality of life. It thus becomes apparent that population itself is not the sole problem since technology, industry, culture, policy, economics and everything that constitutes the entire global society comes into play. Thus the actual studies into the question of the earth’s carrying capacity yield a tremendously broad spectrum of answers ranging from 1 billion to 1000 billion . Further complicating the issue is the disagreement amongst mainstream and neo-Malthusian economists in determining to what degree and under what conditions rational family planning will increase population. Illustrative of the interconnectedness of the population problem with other issues are cities in developing countries; places where pollution is rampant and populations explode. Many thinkers argue that once these countries have achieved a certain level of affluence they will pass through a “demographic transition” and the population will decrease as it is currently in for instance Germany; thus in turn relating population trends to currents in economics, politics and culture. As is well known, the United Nations predicts population to stabilize globally at about 2050.
Clear, however, as the oft cited IPAT equation suggests (environmental impact (I) = population (P) x affluence (A) x technology (T)) population is a part of the equation and by dismissing population as part of environmental trends the environmental community lets, for instance, the pope dominate the population discourse by calling for people to reproduce more. Indeed, if overpopulation is not on the table, then an increase in the world population should have no impact on the environment which patently is not the case.
How does population relate to Biodiversity? The most immediate connection is that population is growing in the developing world whilst biodiversity is likewise being predominantly lost in developing countries. There is a clear relationship between population levels and biodiversity. Habit destruction is the prime cause of biodiversity extinction. In developing countries (where populations are growing ) most biologically diverse regions are cleared for agriculture. At the same time, human population has increased in direct proportion to agricultural yields. Thus, in view of my definition of biodiversity loss as an index of sustainability, it becomes clear very quickly that we are overpopulated and that overpopulation is determinative of extinction. The argument that 20% of the world’s peoples consume 80% of the world’s resources only underlines the importance of factoring population growth into policies aimed at mitigating environmental decline since poor countries are developing towards the western (more destructive) model. The argument that merely the rich are responsible for destroying the earth overlooks the fact that they are made wealthier by virtue of the practices of the people. The cause of environmental decline is thus more systemic and deeper.



Anup Shah, Ecology and The Crisis of Overpopulation (Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998), xxx
Ron Nielson, The Little Green Handbook.
Daniel Chiras, Environmental Science (Redwood City: Benjamin/Cummings Publications, 1991) 93.
John Feney, “Sowing the seeds of a future society” in Growth is Madness (United States, 2008) http://growthmadness.org/2008/01/17/sowing-the-seeds-of-a-future-society/ (accessed March 26, 2008)
Joel E Cohen, How Many People Can the Earth Support? (New York: Norton and Company, 1995), 368.
Anup Shah, Ecology and The Crisis of Overpopulation (Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998), 283.
Daniel Chiras, Environmental Science (Redwood City: Benjamin/Cummings Publications, 1991) 142.
James Gustav Speth, Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (Yale: Yale University Press, 2004), 12.
United Nations, “Population to 2300” in Economic and Social Affairs (United Nations, 2004) http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf (accessed March 28, 2009)
Anup Shah, Ecology and The Crisis of Overpopulation (Northanpton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1998), 283.
John L Gittleman and Mathew E Gomper, “What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You,” Science Vol. 291. no. 5506, (2001) 997 – 999 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;291/5506/997?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=causes+of+extinction&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT (accessed March 20, 2009)
Stuart Mudd The Population Crisis and the Use of World Resources (The Hague: Dr. W. Junk Publishers, 1964) 16.
National Research Council Population, Land Use, and Environment (Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 2005), 157.
Wolfgang Lutz, Population and Environment (New York: Population Council, 2002), 96.

Biodiversity Loss

There are many issues facing the world at present, the most hard to refute, dangerous for our planet and disturbing in its long term consequences is probably the daily mass extinction of species commonly referred to as the “Holocene”. In the 439 Million year history of planet earth, “five great extinction events have reshaped earth in cataclysmic ways [...] each one wiping out between 50 and 95 percent of the life of the day, including the dominant life forms”. Today, biologists say, we are living in the sixth; the “Holocene.” The World Conservation Union established and maintains a list (The Red List); a database of all known species. Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientist in the World Conservation Union have assessed:
1. “One in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians, one in three conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of extinction. 40 per cent of the examined species of planet earth are in danger, including perhaps 51 per cent of reptiles, 52 percent of insects, and 73 per cent of flowering plants”
2. The Current rate of extinction is 100 times that of the background rate whilst the eminent biologist Edward O Wilson, among others, argues that it is in fact 1,000 to 10,000 that of the background rate.
3. “Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100,” not to mention that the biodiversity already lost will take 10 million years to re-establish itself in a different form. The holocaust and the two world wars will not be remembered as what is currently happening to the earth by future generations.
And although the relationship between human activity and the Holocene extinction event is well documented it is clear that the phenomena described above, if left unchecked, will also negatively impact Ontario’s biodiversity, whilst the locality’s ecosystems would flourish, as they have done for millennia, without industrial influence. Indeed, there are a number of species, such as the woodland caribou and eastern wolf, threatened by activities such as loss of habitat due to logging. This is well documented. There are 400 species in total listed in Canada’s “National Species at Risk Act.” A 2001 article in the journal Science listed the “Evil Quartet” of extinction causes: habitat destruction, overexploitation, introduced species, and secondary extinctions – all of which have human origins.


Julia Whitty. “Animal Extinction: The Greatest Threat to Human Kind” in The Independent (The Independent, 2007) http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-397939.html (accessed March 20, 2009)

Julia Whitty. “Animal Extinction: The Greatest Threat to Human Kind” in The Independent (The Independent, 2007) http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-397939.html (accessed March 20, 2009)

John L Gittleman and Mathew E Gomper, “What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You,” Science Vol. 291. no. 5506, (2001) 997 – 999 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;291/5506/997?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=causes+of+extinction&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT (accessed March 20, 2009)

About The Ascension Society

The Ascension Society is a thought experiment. No - we are more: we are a dream experiement. We are thinkers and dreamers. We are asking the hypothetical question of what it would take for us to terraforma and colonize Titan, the largest moon of saturn. We attempt to theoretically re-evalutate contemporary culture to this end. in so doing we hope to provide visitors with novel information on:

- How civilizations collapse
- Flaws in the status quo
- Links to interesting news sites
- Radical and fringe ideas