The asuric mind

Subhash Kak
4 min readApr 25, 2024

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Aleksandr Popov in Unsplash

If one wonders about the origins of moral confusion in current day society, the answer is that we now live in a hyperreality in which signs and symbols we use in our lives no longer reference back to something in the real world, but only to other signs and symbols.

Modern life in an endless hall of mirrors, where life can appear to be no different from a simulation, and this has created perfect conditions for the ascendancy of the asuric mind, a mind that seeks domination.

The asuric mind has birthed the new cult of wokeism. Incubated in the critical theory of the far left and centered on the body, it views reality as socially constructed and defined by power, oppression, and group identity. Fueled by an uncertain future related to steep population decline, wokeism has grown rapidly and it could push the world into a new Dark Age.

In such environment it is easy to defend any action using clever wordplay. You will find philosophers justifying moral positions ranging from gender switching, zoophilia, to castration. Abhorrent stories about child sacrifice in ancient times have been replaced by feel-good tales of pubery blockers and empowerment of children through surgical reassignment of gender.

The multiplicity that we see in the world is born out of the interplay of a multiplicity of minds, of which the two most interesting ones are the mind of the warrior, and the mind of the asuric person. These minds choose two different paths to go about in the world: the path of love, and the path of control.

These two paths are grounded on different understandings of reality.

The first one hinges on the sense that we are all connected, whereas the second rests on the idea that we are atomized.

The first springs from the intuition that love binds all, and we love others if we love ourselves, and this leads to a feeling of compassion for all; the second comes from self-loathing and hostility towards others.

Love gives one the strength to look straight into the eyes of death to take the path of the warrior and of freedom, whereas fear and hate make one choose the asuric path of supremacy.

On the battlefield, all are equal. The warrior will not bow to anyone and doesn’t wish others to bow to him; the asura scrapes the floor in front of those who are more powerful than him, but also expects the less strong to bend the knees before him.

The warrior knows pain and suffering which is why he is unafraid, and going with the heart has decided to put the life on the line for the larger good.

The asura worships power for its own sake, privileging physicality over consciousness.

The warrior is taught secretly by death, whereas the asura is lost in the webs spun by the mind.

The warrior is calm, observing events dispassionately, whereas the asura is full of perverse intensity.

If one were to find parallels with science, the warrior’s understanding is in tune with quantum theory in which things are entangled with each other, and the asuric view is that of classical physics of disconnected objects.

The warrior believes that others are like him even though they are on opposite sides; for the asura, the opponents’ lives have no real meaning.

The warrior

The heart guides the warrior; it is the way of knowledge.

The warrior must destroy whosoever blocks his or her way; likewise, to pursue knowledge, one must be ready to strip earlier coverings that obscure the mind.

The warrior doesn’t worry about the terrain in which he finds himself; he must do his duty and do it as well as possible.

One doesn’t live in either the past or the future on the battlefield; the only moment that matters is the present.

Past and future are creations of the mind; the past is a storyline to fill the empty moments of one’s life.

The warrior’s fortitude comes from the embracing of nothingness.

The asura

The asura’s life is a play of continuous regrets, always checking on where others are on their journey. If they appear to be ahead, he is sad that he did not choose that another path.

There are a million ways to move forward, and the asura wishes to destroy paths other than his own, for then he can brag that he knows the way, despite not knowing where the path ends.

The asuric path that Marx and his followers sketched out is an ancient tribal path to separate people from each other by means of stories that lead to resentment and a sense of victimhood.

I have known individuals who got on such a path accidentally through the excitement of college politics. Now, decades later, they still keep tabs on their political enemies.

Note:

See also, Wokeism and ruination, and The coming population collapse

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