The Rule of the Reavers

How can you have hope in a world ruled by the hopeless?

A while back I was working on an essay about Reavers, the barbaric, savage group of humans in the tv show Firefly that, like Mal Reynolds, roams the galaxy in ships.

Unlike Mal, they’re monsters in all but a technical sense. They’re humans shed of humanity. They murder and rape and cannibalize without any sense of restraint or remorse. They prey on other humans and are so horrific in their conduct that the otherwise brave Jayne Cobb is terrified of them.

In one episode, there’s a conversation between the main characters regarding whether they actually constitute humans.

Jayne: Reavers ain’t men.

Book: Of course they are. Too long removed from civilization perhaps. But men. And I believe there’s a power greater than men, a power that heals.

Mal: Reavers might take issue with that philosophy. If they had a philosophy. If they weren’t too busy gnawing on your insides. Jayne’s right. Reavers ain’t men. They forgot how to be. They got out to the edge of the galaxy, to that place of nothing, and that’s what they became.

I’m sure the religiously inclined might naturally side with Book, whose implicit belief is that man is made in the image of God and therefore capable of redemption.

At the same time, I think those who think like Book miss the point of such statements, because they have a false sense of hope that everyone anywhere can regain or find their humanity.

I eventually put the essay down and let it gather digital dust until recently when I read author Isaac Young’s article, When Shall Beauty Save the World?.

Young has come to the same conclusions as myself and others witnessing the ongoing events in the Western world. As a millennial, I’m of the mindset that nothing good has really happened to my generation since 9/11. There is virtually nothing I personally can look at and say we’ve made genuine progress or things have improved. To those who might point to the smartphone or high-speed internet, I can only say you confuse technological advancement with progress.

The main question in Young’s article is when the tide will turn, and times will at last be exciting and hopeful again – a question I have asked myself again and again and again.

The main issue, of course, is what (or who) is preventing it from happening?  

These are difficult questions to try to answer. Imagine being a Russian in 1988 wondering when the Soviet Union would finally collapse and freedom would come. The collapse was only years away, but what followed was anything but freedom or prosperity.

Unfortunately, the Western world has an even bigger problem facing it when it comes to hope.

Our government, society, and culture are effectively run by Reavers in disguise.

This is in contrast with the galaxy of Firefly governed by the Alliance ruled by authoritarians. They are not insane. Tyrannical and perhaps even capable of abuse of power, but its enforcers are also capable of reason and rational behavior.

What does a real life Reaver look like?

Recently I came across a thesis written by Karen Mitchell titled “Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One Overarching ‘Dark’ Personality Type?”

It is a lengthy read, but if you have the time and interest, I highly recommend you peruse it to the extent you can stomach it, because it helps explain so much of the decay and decline of our modern institutions and social norms.

Essentially, this type of personality is the real-life Reaver. They do not experience emotions other than rage, though they pretend to, and they view anyone who does authentically express and experience those emotions as weak and worthy of being preyed upon. Their only pleasure is sadism by inflicting harm on others, even to the point of killing them directly or indirectly.

Mitchell equates them to the Dementors found in the Harry Potter books/films, but the comparisons are effectively the same. These types of people seek to control and destroy, if not lives literally then their souls any semblance of joy.

A fellow mutual of mine by the name of Mack over on Twitter described it another way in a post:

Demons learn to imitate humans for the sole purpose of tricking them — they cannot feel nor understand human emotions, but they are strategists capable of exploiting weaknesses in humans in order to easily take them out.

Where this gets really complicated for ordinary people to process is that these personalities are found everywhere and anywhere there is power, particularly the power to prey on the weak and vulnerable.

They are just as likely to be a Catholic priest advocating for the Latin Mass as a Baptist preacher preaching predestination, to be a hardcore Branch Covidian or a “pureblood” who’d prefer death to the jab and never bought into the Covid-19 lockdown hysteria.

They can serve at a homeless shelter, or be serving a jail sentence for rape and assault. They can run for local dog catcher, or for the U.S. Senate as either an outspoken MAGA Republican or rabid socialist.

Whatever identities they have are worn as skin suits that allow them to advance a personal agenda.

As Mitchell’s thesis details, they have almost a supernatural ability to deceive, manipulate, and control things around them. They wear psychological masks that, when taken off in a metaphorical sense, can change their physical appearance (see page 206 of the thesis).

They lack any sense of fear beyond the loss of control, and they can be so brazen in their actions that those who witness it can be driven insane.

Moreover, these personalities identify with one another. A good film analogy to that is World War Z, in which a sickly man is completely ignored by a horde of attacking zombies that storm Jerusalem.

The same applies to Reavers: they typically don’t attack their own. This means that they are willing to collaborate, enable, or work together to accomplish a similar goal, and this can occur on an unconscious level.

It explains how people of different ideologies and stripes can seemingly oppose one another on the surface, yet their actions result in the same outcome on par with watching the Washington Generals and the Harlem Globetrotters.

I want you to pause from reading this and contemplate something for a moment:
Does my theory suddenly help makes sense of things going on that otherwise have been inexplicable?

One way I’ve learned to determine the truth of a situation is to add a prepositional phrase to a sentence and then consider whether it still makes sense.

Do that with anything you see going on today; add “because predators run it,” and ask yourself if it makes sense.

It’s why so many institutions have fallen apart or are completely unable to perform their fundamental functions. It’s why organizations become hostile to the very ideals they were founded on. It’s why not caring is submission to the Current Regime; they attack you until you cease to care, because caring is an emotion they do not experience and they despise those who do.

We are currently ruled by those who have a Midas Touch of destruction to healthy human relations necessary to have civilization.

 When any group bases its values on those of a Reaver, only two types of people remain: The predators, the prey, and the weak willed who enable the predator but cannot be preyed upon themselves. Such a situation can only be sustained for so long before something gives. In many cases, the organization collapses because real-life Reavers will sooner see it destroyed by their own hands than give up control.

This is the context in which we ask the question of how to have hope, and if/when things will get better.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any answer, other than to say the best thing to do is to reject false hopes. Or, put differently, avoid falling into False Serenity. Better to have none than think you do when you don’t.

One thought is to hold the line where you can. If you control a space, guard it. If you can preserve something worth conserving, make that your mission. Make that your place to find peace.

Sadly, for some there will be no Serenity, only suffering.

As an aside, I think this is why Stoicism has endured as a philosophy since antiquity. It is rooted in the belief that true happiness can only be found in living a virtuous life, and that is something ultimately only the person in question can choose to do, because all other elements of their life can theoretically be outside of their control. It is the one philosophy (not referring to religion here) that can offer something to anyone, not as a solution perhaps but as a path forward.

That means not hoping that the right person or political party elected will turn things around. That means not hoping that your preferred church or denomination is going to fix everything, because “it’s the true church, unlike those heretics.” The disease infecting the West transcends all of these.

The one thing I can say with certainty is that there is no hope if we can’t come to terms with the deeply unpleasant reality of our circumstances and the extent to which every aspect of our lives is now dominated by predatorial individuals who have long since secured and consolidated their positions to the point that they cannot be dislodged through peaceful means.

Lastly, my conclusion is this: There are currently two great forces clashing in the world today. Those who live in a world based around words, Reavers, and those who live in a world based around actions (call them what you will).

The former believes that by speaking certain words or making declarative statements as if they were literal magic spells, they can shape or alter reality. In contrast, the latter acknowledges that words cannot alter what is real, and simply calling something by another name does not change its nature.

My prediction is that the latter will ultimately triumph over the former, because words can only manipulate people, not reality. You can only pretend and delude yourself for so long before the laws of nature extract consequences.

Only then when the “Reavers” are defeated can things change for the better.

How long that may take is anyone’s guess