A quote that I enjoyed this week:
“I got bored with people saying, like, ‘this world is shit.’ It’s kind of like when people say, ‘oh, this traffic is so bad.’ I’m like, ‘you are traffic.’ — Donald Glover
Today, I’ve got a bit of an expansion from my post about the ‘manosphere’ this time diving into the Twitter (X) side of the internet around this space. I trust my audience and readers to formulate their own opinions on this figure I’m going to discuss…
Bronze Age Pervert, commonly known as BAP, and recently identified more publically and self-reportedly as Costin Alamariu. I’m not here to do a biography on the dude so I’ll link some stuff if you want to learn more about him.
His Wikipedia.
An Atlantic article about him.
His Twitter.
BAP is right-wing. He continues to grow in popularity within far-right spaces. He has a PhD in political science from Yale.
BAP’s philosophy is rooted in a disdain for modern society, which he believes suppresses “personal freedom and initiative.” He criticizes the rise of “bugmen,” a term he uses for people he considers subhuman, who thrive in the current system at the expense of talented individuals. He longs for a return to the “Bronze Age,” an era of virile militarism and intellectual feats, according to BAP.
Will figures like him start a revolution? Probably, not. Should we look at why and how figures like him are growing in popularity? Yes.
Thus, I decided to read his new book: Selective Breeding and the Brith of Philosophy.
These are my initial thoughts as I haven't finished the book yet, so I’ll have to do some more research and reading before my opinions are more “final.”
I’ll start off by saying something nice: BAP (Costin) is a great writer. His style exudes arrogance with elegant prose. I see why people become convinced by his half-baked arguments full of half-truths that are followed up by some asinine points.
I don’t know…maybe I’ve simply convinced myself I’ve seen through this Yale Ph.D.’s arguments because I’m an arrogant fuck myself…
I’ll let you decide.
What follows is essentially some initial notes I’ve cleaned up a bit. They are still a bit raw. However, I felt like sharing because I want the dopamine hit of eyes on this…
“The problem of human inequality is sometimes discussed, especially by some few conservative intellectuals and some academics, especially of the Straussian school. But it is always immaculately and clinically limited to considerations of the superiority of certain human individuals. The discussion of the natural inequality of human groups is strictly forbidden. Being suspected of holding a belief that some individuals are superior is likely to get one called an elitist, or an eccentric. Saying the same about a group, with regard even to a limited quality, is going to get one called a racist and destroy one’s career.[xxxviii] Therefore, those few who do question modern egalitarianism, who talk about virtue, and who even dare to bring up the natural inequality of individuals, always “politely” stop at the question of human groups.
The problem with this view is easy to see: the old truth, natura non facit saltus. Define superiority in whatever way one will, and it will be clear that the individual or quality thus defined doesn’t have a random distribution across human groups. It occurs with greater frequency, often far greater frequency, in some groups than in others. One can’t fail soon to notice that such groups correspond roughly to historically concrete populations, whether nations, tribes, or races.[xxxix] Since an individual doesn’t just appear full-born from Zeus’ thigh, but has parents and ancestors, it is also clear to any honest student that whichever quality one denotes as “superior” will often be seen more frequently in some families than in others. And indeed this is the problem we are talking about at bottom, because many historical nations, tribes, and even races can be loosely defined as a very extended family. In the case of some peoples, like Icelanders, or Ashkenazi Jews, this is very obvious—almost all Ashkenazi Jews, for example, are related to each other at around the level of fifth cousins.[xl] In the same way, Darwin’s family was especially prominent in its production of great minds, and Darwin himself saw eugenics as a logical consequence of his discoveries.[xli]”
Alamariu, Costin. Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy (pp. 36-37).
This passage is from the introduction, but I believe it serves as a foundational element for understanding BAP’s arguments. However, I find his book to be less of an argument and more of a presumptuous worldview based on flawed and outdated (and boring) norms. Interestingly, it also highlights a glaring oversight on his part: his critiques function as a form of performative contradiction. In other words, while he claims to be opposing the system, he’s actually reinforcing it inadvertently.
Thus far, his arguments hinge upon some supposed scientific data on genetics that will be revealed. He swears it’s coming. I guess we just have to trust him?
BAP desperately latches on to this desire and drive for a world that is based on some form of objective understanding of morality, virtue, and ethics. The projection of his own religiosity constantly punches you in the face throughout his book. To hold his worldview you have to dismiss basic information in sociology and how our identity is constructed.
BAP’s argument relies on him being some outside observer of the social structures he’s attempting to critique. His fervor for an “objective” understanding of morality, virtue, and ethics can be seen as a form of desire that is not just his own but is part of a larger socioeconomic complex. He’s not simply expressing personal beliefs; he’s projecting a societal desire for a particular form of order, a particular understanding of “superiority.” I believe this hierarchical desire for a formulation of superiority based on an objective metric remains the norm; it’s the drive of society; it’s the drive of BAP.
It often becomes a bad drive. In the case of BAP, it is a bad drive.
I’ve recently come to the belief that there’s a little fascist screaming inside of all of us; however, the task for us as humans is to direct that screaming voice into not being a fucking fascist.
He latches onto this ideology that “superiority” in certain qualities is not randomly distributed across human groups but occurs more frequently in some than in others. But you see? The thing he desperately latches onto is this idea of “superiority.” What has established the norm of superiority? Superiority is socially constructed. BAP wishes to move away from a social constructionist world.
“Wisdom, like the other true virtues or areta, can’t be taught, but is a matter of the blood. The wise man—and later, by extension, the philosopher—is not taught or nurtured so much as he must be bred; at most he is a lucky accident. His education, insofar as it is at all possible, takes place “outside the city,” whether under the tutelage of a god who reveals to the philosopher (or the wise man) his mission and his “inborn arts,” or under the tutelage of a being like Cheiron, who is half-man half-beast and who Apollo himself must consult on matters of nature and breeding.[ccxxxv] This education in other words must consist, again, of a “de-nomofication,” a de-civilization and “rewilding.” To be frank, of a barbarization, at least as seen from the point of view that identifies civilization with domesticity.[ccxxxvi] By contrast in this process nomos, convention, and its representatives as embodied in those who have learned, if it does have any purpose, it is to thwart the growth and to cover up genuine insight into nature—knowledge as the result of the “hunt” for “prey”—and its transmission, and to replace it with an entirely sham and shadow “knowledge,” with cant that only has the purpose of the self-preservation of the many.”
“Finally, the object of investigation of the philosopher—nature, phusis, by which philosophy itself stands or falls—is itself at its origin only apparent as blood. That is, it emerges from the ubiquity and homogeneity and darkness of convention, becomes apparent to the perception of the wise man as a fact of biological breeding. In this it has rather the character of a revelation or a manifestation to the immediate perception, rather than a discovery by logical deduction. Nature is made manifest to the seer and poet through the observation of botanical or animal life, and through the persistence of inherited qualities across generations.”
— BAP
Finally, the object of investigation of the philosopher—nature, phusis, by which philosophy itself stands or falls—is itself at its origin only apparent as blood. That is, it emerges from the ubiquity and homogeneity and darkness of convention, becomes apparent to the perception of the wise man as a fact of biological breeding. In this it has rather the character of a revelation or a manifestation to the immediate perception, rather than a discovery by logical deduction. Nature is made manifest to the seer and poet through the observation of botanical or animal life, and through the persistence of inherited qualities across generations.
BAP pg. 182
So there are some excerpts.
I’ve already formulated some concluding thoughts. I suppose some of this will need more context but I’m hoping this provides some basic tenets of the issues I find with his work…
In Progress Conclusion
BAP's ideological framework isn't just a set of beliefs; it's his sanctuary, a refuge from the uncertainties that permeate our human condition. He clings to the notion of an "objective" moral order based on his constructed conception of "superiority," not just as a philosophical stance but as a spiritual sedative. It's as though he needs the construct of a singular, superior God to quell the disquiet, to give him a sense of control in a world that is inherently chaotic.
There's chaos in embracing life's ambiguities over its formulaic drive for certainty; there's an essence for life in that endeavor, one that then finds various modalities of truth, thus various modalities of God.
I think of Nietzsche as someone who became a foundation in the evolution of deconstructionist forms of thought, a man who used his own formulated modalities as a toolset to create a hammer that shatters old idols or becomes a destroyer of monolithic symbolic Gods. In contrast, BAP uses Nietzsche as a tool to merely confirm his own theories about wisdom, virtues, and the importance of "blood."
But maybe more dangerously…he uses Nietzsche to confirm his own narcissistic superiority complex.
Nietzsche would laugh at the irony of BAP's endeavor. While BAP believes he's dismantling the "new" world idols, Nietzsche would likely point out how easily BAP is being fucked by his own dogmas. The obsession with his personal notion of superiority stems from his own sense of lack, a lack that makes him unable to accommodate a multiplicital understanding of drives and desires.
And because he lacks this modality, he becomes trapped in the bindings of his own constructed conceptualization of a superior man (God). A hierarchical formulation that is already the established order, thus he finds himself in a self-imposed loop where his spiritual and ideological rigidity (religiosity) serves to reinforce the very system he claims to critique.
In essence, BAP's work serves as a cautionary tale of how the quest for existential certainty can lead one down a path of intellectual and spiritual myopia. He's a performative contradiction. For his sake, I'll perform my own contradiction as a concluding statement: BAP lacks the superior qualities to hold the nuanced perspectives found in rhizomatic structures of knowledge, as opposed to his more linear, arborescent framework. Fortunately for BAP, my worldview is more dynastic in nature than his. Therefore, even his inferior modality is in the process of becoming something that defies previous limitations.
“There is no single, definite way for the individual… if you want to go on your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live.”
Jung’s Letter to Frau V (15 December 1933)