IN these postmodernist, post-Existentialist times of decay we, the last of the sentient men, wait in the nude. For we have been stripped of nation—mere colonies of Zion. We have been stripped of faith—not a belief in God, but a belief in Man: the ideal in Man, the hope in Man, the faith in Man. We have been stripped of culture—once a vital source of identity, tradition, beauty and promise; now dead, massacred like the Romanovs, its remains defiled by today’s canaille. And we have been stripped of brotherhood—who is there to listen to us? Who is there to listen to?

God died of old age, but Man was murdered. And not at the twilight of his life, but at the beginning of his greatness. The Enlightenment had left him fatherless—free to create, conquer and progress, yet vulnerable. And if it hadn’t been for the parasite that had steadily and shamelessly slithered its way into Man long before the death of God (the parasite that would go on to claim his life), he would have had the chance to become God, with the earth as his paradise.

But that was not to be, for Man was set free with this festering parasite that could only be subdued by the spirit and the conviction—illusory yet psychologically tangible—given him by God, whose death had left a rich and fertile void which was gradually sterilised by the hostile, foreign growth. This void could have sprung forth greatness and beauty, a new spirit and a new conviction—no longer illusory but real and reasonable, creative and progressive and divine. It could have, but instead it was clogged with a malignant, cultural cancer.

And so we wait in the nude, looking ahead with furrowed brow, knowing what could have been. We wait in the nude, like Man on the morning of the Enlightenment. But unlike Man, we are not vulnerable, for we are aware and we are defiant. We have been stripped of everything and we wait in the nude, but that does not mean we must wait disgraced and defeated, like our enemy would have us. No, we are not disgraced, for the figure we cut is beautiful and godlike and will continue to be so, in the rotting face of the parasite and the canaille it feeds on.

Peter Paul Patrick