Jews & Their Rebbes

Comment: Didn’t Kevin MacDonald say that guru-ism is a bigger thing among Jews than among wasps and whites?

Guru-ism is about loyal admiration and worship of a great man of learning and spirituality in Jewish tradition. The man is seen as superior to others around him. Indeed, he is so great and amazing that he expects devotion from those around him.

Guru-ism is a form of super-individualism that works against democratic individualism. It says there is this great prophet, seer, genius, or whatever whose individual worth is so superior that others cannot equal him. Never. So, they must suppress their own inferior individualism in honor of the great individualist. There was some of this in Marxism where Marx was not to be questioned. There is some of this in Ayn Rand philosophy where some individuals are deemed to be so great that they should never compromise whereas others should submit to the great man’s will. Though some people think Rand was for the common individual, she was only for the super-individual. At the end of FOUNTAINHEAD (the movie), the the rich guy submits his will to that of Howard Roark. He gives his woman and money to Roark so that the tallest skyscraper will be built exactly as Roark envisions it. And Rand certainly didn’t see others as equals. She saw herself as a great prophet and expected those around her to agree with her. And Freud was the same way with his followers. Though Susan Sontag didn’t have acolytes and devotees, she was also a very difficult person who acted like she knew everything, and she had no time to disagree with those less brilliant than her.

Thus, the cult of ultra-individualism (of the great guru) is anti-democratic-individualist and anti-middle-individualist. It simply won’t recognize other individuals as equal or equally worthy.

Jewish individualism is a blend of both ancient tribalism and radical modernism. There is the element of the devotion to the Great Prophets. It also has the element of the cult of the towering visionary genius who sees farther than others and plays the role of Prometheus.

In contrast, the most prevalent kind of American individualism was middle-individualism if not mass-individualism. It tended to be suspicious of ‘great thinkers’ who seemed to know everything and ‘great artists’ whose vision and passion were so great that they had every right to violate all social and communal norms.

So, American individualism was said to be conformist, philistine, and anti-intellectual. But it was democratic in the sense that every person’s individualism was respected as equally valid and worthy as anyone else’s. For all individualisms to count as equal, a culture must be wary of ultra-individualism that says a certain guru is so very great that others should suppress their ‘lame and square individual’ and look to him for answers and guidance.

For American middle-individualism to sustain itself, it had to rely on manners (though this was bigger in UK) and community standards. Manners and social values are something that can bind everyone from rich to poor, smart to dumb. And Bob Hope represented this kind of middle-individualism. He could be goofy but he was always mindful not to offend or go against the prevailing stands of what was considered tasteful and decent.

But with the rise of Jewish influence, guru-individualism took over. It claimed to present new views, new visions, and new concepts that were so startling that they simply could not conform to the common standards of white-gentile-dominant society. The new expressions could be intellectually bolder than anything that came before, sensually more erotic than any that came before, humorously more outrageous and funny than anything that came before, and etc.

As much as people pretend to love ‘equality’, they also want to worship something that is deemed super-astounding and great. Cinephiles prefer to study Kubrick than John Sayles. Rock fans find Dylan more fascinating than Gordon Lightfoot.

In a way, Jews and homos have come to monopolize a kind of group-guru-ism whereby they are seen as so great that the rest of us should get on our knees and worship at their feet.

There was some of this guru-ism in German culture too, what with the cult of Beethoven, Wagner, and Nietzsche, later leading to worship of Hitler.

Ironically, though Jewish-ism and German-ism went head to head in a bad way in the 20th century (USSR was influenced by Marxism), both tended to indulge in guru-ism that was so much at odds with the more moderate middle-individualism of Anglos and Anglo-America.

Guru-ism can be useful in supporting geniuses, but it can also foster mindless cultist worship of individuals as gods. And that is always dangerous.

About Luke Ford

I've written five books (see Amazon.com). My work has been covered in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on 60 Minutes. I teach Alexander Technique in Beverly Hills (Alexander90210.com).
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